


Everywhere I Go (I See His Face)

by queenofcryptiids



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AI! Tony Stark, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, GUESS WHO'S MAD ABOUT ENDGAME????, Graphic Language, HEAVY endgame spoilers and aftermath, I need a hug, Irondad, Is it considered canon compliant?, M/M, Multi, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sam Wilson is the light of my life, Slow Burn, Work In Progress, as of Endgame at least, everybody needs a hug, idk if that's something people care about, maybe it will be in far from home?, more like IronSAD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-05-31 15:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19428358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofcryptiids/pseuds/queenofcryptiids
Summary: “Hey, kid.”His blood turned to ice.He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t heard the voice a few times before, in the midst of a crowd or sometimes during quiet moments alone. But never this loud, this close, or this real. The phone slipped from his hand as he felt his heart stop. “It’s not real.” Peter whispered to himself. “It’s not real.” He stepped back in panic, mind reeling, heart racing.“Well this isn't quite the reaction I was waiting for. Way to roll out the welcome wagon, kid.” The AI's voice said.Tony’svoice.---In the aftermath of the war for earth, Peter Parker is trying to move on with his life. But when the new AI in his suit turns out to be a digital clone of his late mentor and friend, old memories he'd rather do without come crashing back to the surface. Meanwhile, Bucky and Sam both try to adapt to their new roles and come to terms with Steve's decisions.





	1. Just a Costume

Everything was quiet for a moment after the reactor in Tony’s chest went dark. No one moved, including Peter, though his vision quickly blurred with tears as he watched Pepper bow her head to rest her forehead against Tony’s now still chest. Then, everything broke apart. 

“No,” Peter said simply. “No, no…” It wasn’t an angry, god-defying lament, but a simple statement of disbelief, recognition that something about Tony’s face is still and blank was profoundly wrong. As if, at any second, Tony would open his eyes again, crack a joke, give them all a sideways smile. But he didn’t. The air was hot and still. And Tony didn’t move. 

“No, Tony—” Peter begged quietly. He suddenly became aware of a heavy hand on his shoulder, pulling him gently away from Tony’s body. Without warning, Peter turned toward whoever it was and buried his face in their chest. The cold metal he found against his cheek easily betrayed the figure as Colonel Rhodes, who appeared to have no hangups about wrapping his arms around Peter and holding him tightly. 

The next hour or so after that was a blur. 

No one quite seemed to know what to do with Peter, or with themselves, now that the immediate threat was gone and the dust was settling. He was jostled between heroes while they spoke quietly between themselves, no one quite wanting to leave Peter alone to himself. He refused to leave Pepper’s side, insisted upon helping she and Captain Rogers carry Tony through a portal Dr. Strange made. It took him longer than it should have to realize where Dr. Strange had brought them. It was the old Avengers tower, the only place left to house that many heroes now that the compound had been destroyed. 

Peter couldn’t quite remember what was said, or what was said to him, who was speaking and who had spoken, but eventually he came back to himself as he sat on a bench in an empty hallway and realized someone was speaking to him. 

“...Peter? You with me, son?”

He blinked. Steve Rogers was kneeling in front of him. At some point Peter must’ve taken off his iron spider suit and the classic red one beneath, because he realized he was wearing only his jeans and a stupid T-shirt. “C-Captain Rogers…” Peter managed. Steve managed something too: a broken smile. His eyes were red. 

“How are you holding up?” Peter couldn’t think of anything to say, so he shrugged and tried not to burst into tears again. Not in front of Captain America. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this. Tony, he—” Steve’s voice caught nearly imperceptibly, but he quickly cleared his throat. “He spoke very highly of you, told us so many stores about you. I can only imagine how much he meant to you.” 

Steve already knew basically everything there was to know about Peter. For a while, Tony couldn’t shut up about him.  _ God, Steve, I wish you could have met him. He was so much like you, he scared me sometimes.  _ Steve knew about his parents, his uncle…

And now this. He tried not to curse under his breath and nearly failed. “We’re proud of you, son. All of us. We couldn’t have pulled this off without you. And I know Tony’s proud too.” As he spoke, though Peter didn’t notice, he nodded at the doorway and signaled for Sam to enter. Peter couldn’t barely look at him even once he entered his line of sight and began to speak. 

“Hi, Peter. I’m Sam.” Sam said. Peter looked at him, which Sam took as an invitation to gently continue. “And I just wanted to be here to let you know that it’s okay for you to let yourself feel what you’re feeling. And that you won’t be alone when you do.” Sam gently placed a hand on Peter’s arm.

Steve opened his mouth to add, but Peter’s was hanging open, like he was about to say something. 

“I…” Peter started meekly. Sam and Steve patiently watched him. “I—“ his lip quivered and tears finally managed to spill from his eyes again. “I need to call my aunt.”

Steve looked back at Sam, both of their hearts breaking. Peter was too young for everything that had happened. Sam was always better at this stuff than Steve, so he put a hand on Steve’s shoulder and slowly moved past him, ready to try to comfort the kid, but a voice from down the hall distracted them both. 

“Where is he?” 

“Happy, it’s alright, he’s--”

“I’ve got to see him--”

Peter’s head snapped toward the sound. He knew that voice. Within a few seconds, Happy came into view, his crisp black suit covered in dust, an expression on his face that was equal parts horrified, broken, and relieved. “Peter.” he said simply as he saw him.

“Happy!” Peter responded, managing to shakily stand and take a few steps toward Happy, who jogged to meet him. “Happy, I’m so sorry, I tried to--I couldn’t--” Happy cut him off by essentially slamming into him, wrapping his arms around the kid’s shoulders, and squeezing him tightly. 

“Thank god you’re alright.” Happy whispered. Peter let out a sob and buried his face in Happy’s suit. Happy shushed him quietly. “It’s okay. Your aunt is on her way.” Someone that made Peter cry harder, pressing himself tightly against Happy. He looked up at Steve and Sam, all three of them sick with grief.

Peter’s voice was hitching and breathless. “I’m s--I’m sorry Happy. I couldn’t save him, Happy, it just happened so f-fast, I’m so sorry—” 

Steve had enough of hearing the kid suffer, so he moved beside Peter and put his hand on his shoulder. “Peter. What happened isn’t your fault. You were incredible. Tony would have been so proud of you, son. He always has been.” 

He ended the sentiment with a tight, sad smile, and Peter quickly swallowed his tears and nodded at him, trying—and probably failing—to look brave. Truthfully, he was thankful for Steve and Sam’s words of comfort. 

Maybe one day he’d believe them. 

***

_ FIVE MONTHS LATER _

“You’re driving? Again?” Bucky asked sourly as Sam climbed into the driver’s side. “I’m old enough to be your grandfather. Have some respect for your elders.”

“Better than the backseat.” Sam laughed easily. “Do you even know how to drive a car? I mean you were still on horses back in your day, right?”

“Watch it. You’re already treading on thin ice,  _ Captain. _ ” Bucky mocked. 

Sam grinned crookedly as he peeled out of the parking lot, catching sight of his own masked face in the side mirror. “That never gets old.”

Things were...weird for a long time after Steve left. The Avengers scrambled for a leader, and since Sam was officially the Star-Spangled man with a plan, he was quickly volun-told for the position. Things were quiet after Thanos, which was a relief to the fledgling new team, who still struggled to get their footing in a Iron Man-less world. 

Bucky had essentially no idea who he was after losing decades of his life to hydra. After coming back to the world of the living, he knew only one thing: following Captain America to the ends of the earth. So that’s what he did. And as much as Sam complained about it, it was nice to have a sidekick who knew the Captain America drill. Even if that sidekick was Bucky. 

With the local schools starting up again, Sam has made it his personal mission to visit the poorer schools in the neighborhood to attempt his own twist on a good old fashioned Steve Rogers pep talk. Mental health was a focus of this round of school visits, which the rest of the team found to be pretty fitting. 

“Try not to be so scary this time, okay?” Sam joked as he parked the car, then looked into the rear view mirror to adjust his cowl and fiddle with his gloves. Bucky rolled his eyes but couldn’t say anything before Sam’s phone rang. He took it out and frowned at it; he didn’t get many cell phone calls. Not many people had the number. After a quick glance at Bucky, worried something might be seriously wrong, Sam answered it. 

“This is Wilson.”

“S-Captain Wilson? Hi, it’s May Parker. Colonel Rhodes gave me your number”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “May.” He said, looking pointedly at Bucky. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes, we’re...well...I suppose we’re not alright…” he heard her sigh on the other end. “It’s Peter.” 

Sam’s heart dropped. May wouldn’t have called if it weren’t serious. She never had before. “What’s going on? Is he okay?”

“He’s...he’s not himself. Everything with...well, you know what with. He just takes things so hard. He hasn’t been eating, he’s lost weight, he doesn’t sleep, he has nightmares...I don’t know what to do anymore.” May said helplessly. “I’ve tried to get him into counseling but, well, I just thought that maybe you’d have a better idea of what he was going through than I would.”

With a sigh, Sam leaned against the hood of the car and rubbed the back of his neck. “I was worried something like this might happen.” Bucky’s brows pulled together in concern. “Would it be alright if we...if we met him somewhere? Maybe just to talk?” 

When May sighed again, it was in relief. “That’s so kind of you, Captain Wilson. I won’t tell him ahead of time, though. He’d try to get out of it.”

“That’s probably for the best. We’ll meet him tomorrow.” 

“Thank you both. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this—“ 

“Hey. Least we can do, May.”

Sam hung up and turned to Bucky with a sigh. “It’s the kid.” 

“Figured as much. He alright?” 

“No.” Sam pocketed the phone and continued to make his way to the entrance of the middle school where their...performance was located. “From what it sounded like, he probably has some pretty significant PTSD from Thanos.” 

“Shit. So you’re gonna meet him tomorrow?” 

Bucky tried not to sigh as he pulled on his blue eye mask for his goofy Sam-Assigned Howling Crusaders costume.  “No.” Sam said. “ _ We’re _ meeting him tomorrow.”

Bucky stopped. “Uh. You sure that’s a good idea? Meeting with the guy who kicked his ass in Germany?”

“First of all,  _ he _ kicked  _ your _ ass. And second, yes, I am sure. You’re better at this stuff than you think. He’ll appreciate seeing somebody that went through hell and lived.” 

“Well, you’re the boss.” Bucky grunted. Sam tightened the strap of the shield around his forearm and smiled a little solemnly. 

“Damn right I am.”

***

Peter hadn’t worn the suit in a very long time. Guilt sank into his gut like ice every time the news ran a story about the strange disappearance of Queens’ Hometown Hero, but even so, each time he tried to wear the suit again, all he could see was Tony’s arc reactor going dim, and suddenly he forgot how to breathe. 

Ned had tried to tell him that everyone needed a break sometimes, including and especially Spider-Man, but that didn’t feel right either. Not being Spider-Man killed him with guilt, and the more guilt he felt, the less he could work up the drive to be Spider-Man, a vicious cycle of self-hatred and inaction.  He walked home from school now, even though it was faster to take the train and much faster to web. Peter spent the time zoning out with his headphones blasting, trying to take on the roar of city and forget. 

“We still on for MK tonight?” Ned asked as they headed for the door of the school. Peter smiled back at him. 

“Yeah, dude, of course.” He said cheerfully. Ned could tell that the smile wasn’t genuine; it didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t mention it. Peter had enough people breathing down his neck between May, the Avengers, and the media. And Ned had reminded him about once a day that he was here if Peter ever wanted to talk about anything, and after these five months, Peter continued to turn him down. 

“Okay. I’ll text you.” Ned said as Peter turned to head toward his house. He watched him go for a moment before he sighed and made his own way home. 

Peter didn’t make it very far, just a few blocks, before he noticed a parked car on one of the side streets he took on his long way home. A man wearing sunglasses and a cap leaned against it, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on where he’d seen him before, at least until the man spoke. 

“Hey, kid!” he yelled. “Where can a guy get a good sandwich around here?” 

Peter stopped and pulled his headphone out, face pulling into a frown as another man exited the car. “Captain Wilson?” 

“Hey, Queens.” Said Bucky with a gentle smile as he stepped out to follow Sam. Peter swallowed nervously and made his way across the street to them. 

“Wh-what are you guys doing here? Is there something wrong?” Peter asked nervously. He expected Sam to say something about Spider-Man’s absence, but instead, Sam simply nodded at the car he leaned against. 

“Like I said. Just looking for a good sandwich joint.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Delmar’s has the best sandwiches in the city.” He said with the beginnings of a smile. Sam returned it and opened the driver’s side door to climb in.

“We’ll be the judge of that. Hop in. Take shotgun. Bucky likes being cozy in the back.” Sam said. Peter obeyed, oblivious to the glare Bucky was shooting in Sam’s direction. “And make sure you move your seat all the way back.” Sam added for good measure. 

The drive to Delmar’s wasn’t unpleasant, but it was certainly unfamiliar. Peter shifted uncomfortably every few seconds, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Sam to ask him about being Spider-Man or try to bring up Tony. But instead, Sam just turned on the radio and grinned as he pulled onto the main road. Peter prepared himself for the inevitable  _ where’s Spider-Man been _ or  _ So about Thanos... _

“How’s school going, kid?” Sam asked instead. Peter blinked. 

“Um...fine, I guess. Just started.” 

“Good.” Sam replied. “What classes are you taking this year? You’re a Junior, right? Or Senior?”

Peter answered the questions, still a little skeptical, but Sam had a way of making him forget what it was he was suspicious about, and soon he was lost in a story about he and Ned’s project in organic chemistry.

Mr. Delmar was glad to see him, coming around the counter and hugging him tightly and completely ignoring the two superhumans beside him. “Peter!” He said joyfully. “God, I thought I’d never see you again, kid!” 

“Hi, Mr. Delmar.” Peter murmured sheepishly. “How’s Poncho been doing?” He looked around for the shop cat, but couldn’t find him. 

As Delmar pulled away, he made a face that sent Peter’s heart into his shoes. “Oh...Pete, I’m sorry...it’s been five years...Poncho was old…” 

“Oh…” Peter stepped back. From behind him, Sam put a hand on his shoulder and was about to try to say something comforting, but the shop owner spoke first, the smile returning to his face. 

“But hey, it’s alright. I found this little guy eating garbage behind the shop just a few months ago! His name is Banjo.” He reached behind the counter and held up a different, unfamiliar cat who looked more goblin than feline, handing him to Peter. “And it looks like you’ve got some new friends to introduce, too.” He looked up at Sam and Bucky, as if only just then realizing that Peter was being flanked by Captain America and the Winter Soldier. 

Peter introduced them and ordered three of his favorite kind of sandwich, though of course, Mr. Delmar knew to press just one of them down “real flat”. Sam paid for the three of them, ignoring Peter’s polite protests and continuing to make easy conversation with Peter. Bucky was mostly quiet, though every so often he threw out a question too. 

As they were leaving, Mr. Delmar stopped them. “Hey, Cap?” Sam stopped and turned. “Shitty about Rogers.” He said in his usual eloquent way. “That’s a raw deal for everybody. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re one hell of a Captain.” 

Peter expected Sam to flash one of his easy smiles and thank Delmar, but instead, his jaw tightened, though nearly imperceptibly, and he gave a tight nod. “I appreciate that.” he said simply. 

They ended up on a quiet path in central park, working their way through “the best sandwiches in Queens” when the other shoe finally dropped. They’d fallen into an easy silence, made easy only by the low-key atmosphere Sam seemed to bring with him everywhere. 

Peter was explaining a few recent events to Bucky when Sam motioned at a bench and the three of them sat down. “I’m sure you’ve already guessed why we wanted to see you today.” He said slowly. Peter felt his heart rate spike. 

“Yeah...about Spider-Man, right?” 

It was Bucky rather than Sam who shook his head. “We’re not worried about Spider-Man, Pete. We’re worried about  _ you _ . Your aunt called us. Said you haven’t been eating or sleeping, having nightmares.” 

Peter hung his head in shame, suddenly becoming very interested in the leaf-strewn concrete below them. He couldn’t see, but Bucky quickly glanced at Sam, nervous that he’d only made Peter feel worse. Sam gave him a gentle nod, encouraging him to continue. 

“I did the same.” Bucky said eventually. “For a long time. Sometimes I still have nightmares. I tried running from it. But...well, we all know how that turned out.” He closed his eyes for a long time, so long that Sam eventually spoke up to fill the silence. 

“Before I met Steve, I ran a PTSD support group for vets. I know this stuff. It doesn’t mess around. And if you’re not careful, it’ll eat you alive.” He watched Peter’s face for a long time, able to recognize and identify the many emotions that crossed it. The kid’s expression seemed to settle on fear. 

He took a breath that hitched on its way in, then bit his lip. “I’ve...tried. To wear the suit again. But every time I try it’s--it’s like…” he couldn’t put into words the way his heart raced, the way he’d recoil from the suit as if it had electrocuted him. How the memories of their confrontation with Thanos came rushing over him like a flood. All he could do was sit there helplessly staring at the ground while his eyes welled with tears. 

“It’s going to be hard. I won’t lie to you.” Sam said. “But you can’t run away from this forever. Try putting the suit on. I can give you some grounding techniques to help with the flashbacks. You don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t even need to keep it on. Just give it a shot.” Peter thought about that. The way Sam put it, it really didn’t seem so scary after all. It was just a costume. It didn’t have to mean anything. 

“It’s just something to think about.” He gently took Peter’s phone from his hands and opened his contacts, making two new ones for himself and Bucky. “You can call us and we’ll even walk you through it, if you want.” 

After a long period of staring at the new contacts in his phone, Peter looked up at the both of them. As childish as he felt for it, it might actually be nice to have someone walk him through actually putting on the suit. Just someone to be there. “Okay...I’ll give it a try.” 

“Whenever you’re ready.” Sam emphasized. “And if something goes wrong,  _ call _ one of us. Okay?” Peter nodded, but Bucky nudged him playfully. 

“You promise?” 

That earned him a small grin from Peter. “Yeah, I promise.”

They headed back to Sam’s car, feeling lighter now that Peter wasn’t so on edge. His mind was far away though, running through a thousand different scenarios that might play out when he tried on the mask. Only about half of them ended in something other than a mental breakdown. Still, with Sam and Bucky cheering him on, Peter felt like it was something he  _ had _ to do. 

The car came to a stop outside of his apartment and Peter was ready to get out when Sam stopped him, an uncharacteristically serious look on his face. 

  
“Peter, you’re a part of our team. Not just Spider-Man.  _ You _ . A really important part at that. Without you, we never would have stopped Thanos. And we don’t--” Sam abruptly stopped himself and looked down for a moment. Peter was about to ask if he was alright, but he finally cleared his throat and met his gaze. “We don’t let each other down.” 


	2. Updates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter tries on the suit for the first time since Tony's death. Bucky and Sam plan their first mission as the new Avengers.

_It’s just a costume. It’s just a costume. It’s just a costume. ___

__Peter repeated the mantra over and over as he paced back and forth in his room, staring down the silver case he’d shoved the suit back into as soon as he’d gotten home from the tower that day. The closest he’d ever gotten was taking the suit out and holding it for just a brief moment before stuffing it back into the case and trying to forget about it all over again._ _

_You can’t run from it forever._

__He knelt down and clicked the latches on the case, then stepped back as it sprang open a little abruptly to reveal the shining gold and blue suit. Peter looked at it for a long time, noting the flecks of dirt and even blood that still clung to it after all this time. “It’s just a costume.” Peter told himself. He reached out and touched the suit, then slowly slid it from the case and held it. “Just a costume.”_ _

__The suit was heavier than he remembered. His hands shook as he sat down on the floor and slowly, deliberately, pulled the suit over his legs, his chest, his arms. With a shaky breath in, Peter rapped the emblem on his chest. The suit shrunk itself tight against his skin, and for a moment Peter trembled, feeling like he was being suffocated. He stood, wobbled, and grabbed at his phone, ready to call Sam. But catching a glimpse of himself in his mirror made him pause._ _

__He looked so normal in the suit. Like he was always meant to wear it. Peter took a deep breath in, a little amazed that he still knew how, then let it back out again._ _

__“See? Just a costume.”_ _

__Peter did the same with the mask, holding it gingerly before sliding it over his head and taking in the well-remembered heads-up display that slowly blinked to life._ _

__“Hello, Peter.”_ _

__He managed a tentative smile. “H-hey, Karen.” He murmured breathlessly. This was going...alright. Much better than expected anyway. He picked up his phone after all, ready to report the success to Sam and Bucky._ _

__“I have updates.” Karen was saying. “Would you like to install them?”_ _

__“Yeah, sure.” Peter said absently._ _

_Got the suit on. Not so bad after all._ He typed, watching Karen’s progress bar out of the corner of his eye, until a small message that proclaimed Update Complete blinked in blue. _Might even go on patrol sometime soo—_ " 

__“Hey, kid.”_ _

__His blood turned to ice._ _

__He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t heard the voice a few times before, in the midst of a crowd or sometimes during quiet moments alone. But never this loud, this close, or this real. The phone slipped from his hand as he felt his heart stop._ _

__“It’s not real.” Peter whispered to himself. “It’s not real.” He stepped back in panic, mind reeling, heart racing._ _

__“Well this isn't quite the reaction I was waiting for. Way to roll out the welcome wagon, kid.” The voice said._ _

___Tony’s_ voice._ _

__“Peter?” Tony asked after a moment. “Your vitals are off the charts, kid wh--” Peter stumbled backwards and tore the mask from his head, ending up tripping over his own backpack and knocking trophies from his shelves as he went. He couldn’t breathe. He could feel the hot wind that came off the smoldering remains of the compound, could practically taste blood in his mouth. Peter fumbled for his phone. He needed to call Sam and Bucky, he needed help, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The shaking of his hands nearly made him drop the phone as he frantically searched for Bucky’s number, breaths coming quick and shallow. He briefly wondered if he might pass out. As the line rang, May knocked on his door._ _

__“Peter? Honey, are you okay?”_ _

__It jolted him briefly, long enough to shake him out of the panic, at least for a moment. “Uh, I—I’m alright. I just knocked over my trophy.” He quickly pressed the end call button on his phone and returned his eyes to the mask._ _

___You can’t run from it._ _ _

__“Let me know if you need anything.” May said. Her tone was suspicious, but Peter didn’t let it bother him. Instead, he inched closer to the mask as if it was an explosive just waiting to detonate. He even went as far as to poke it once or twice before picking it up and holding it gingerly._ _

__The breath he took was shaky and threatened to break into a sob, but after just a moment’s hesitation, he slowly slid the mask back on._ _

__It took a moment to initialize. Peter’s heartbeat was loud in his ears while he waited, holding his breath._ _

__“That wasn’t quite the reaction I was hoping for.” Tony said through the mask. Peter was glad he was sitting down, as he felt a tremor run down his spine. “Your vitals are still a mess.”_ _

__Peter ignored the observation. “Wh—what is this? What are you?”_ _

__Through the lens of his mask, a bluish hologram flickered to life near the other side of the room. The breath in Peter’s lungs escaped in a shocked huff. It was Tony, leaning against a wall with his hand in his pocket, and though his image was staticky and glitched, he looked exactly as Peter had remembered him. Smirking, the hologram shrugged off of the wall and gestured to its own body. “I’m plan B.”_ _

__Peter waited while holograms of coding and plans filled his screen and Tony’s voice continued. “Uploading consciousness was always a pet project of mine. I figured something would happen to me sooner or later, so I was always my own test subject...after everything with Ultron it kind of fell by the wayside. But these past few weeks with Thanos...well. Him or me, right? So I did a few more tests, uploaded a full file and wrote some code and boom!” The hologram held out its arms. “Nailed it, right?”_ _

__He was silent, still trying to keep himself from having a panic attack. The hologram continued, though his brash tone faded a little at the lack of response from Peter. “I found a way to program artificial neurons to function the way they would in my brain. So really it’s less of an AI, more of a--”_ _

__“ _Why?_ ” Peter asked abruptly, cutting him off. The hologram frowned as Peter angrily got to his feet. “Why me? Why would Tony give this tech to me? He had a wife, a daughter! Why me?”_ _

__The hologram’s face fell. Peter was actually surprised at how genuine the uncomfortable expression was. “Pepper was never a fan of the whole _Lazarus_ thing. And Morgan, she’s—she’s too young to understand this. I didn’t want to upset her.”_ _

__“Oh, well that was considerate of you.” Peter said hotly._ _

__“Pete—“ the hologram appeared to step toward him, almost pleading. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”_ _

__“Happy to see what?!” Peter asked with a mirthless laugh. “You’re not Tony, you’re just a—a simulation, a bunch of ones and zeros!”_ _

__“Kid—"_ _

__Peter suddenly gripped the bottom of his mask as if threatening to tear it off. “Don’t call me that!” he hissed. “You’re not Tony. Tony Stark is dead.” With that, Peter pulled the mask off of his head and threw it to the floor. He did the same with the suit, stuffing it back into its case a little haphazardly, before kicking it beneath his bed, ready to forget about it again._ _

__***  
With a deep breath, Sam gripped Steve’s—his—shield and stared down the target on the far side of the training room. He wound his arm back, lined up his shot, and hurled the shield at the target mannequin. _ _

__It missed—by quite a bit, though the margin was much narrower than when he first started training with Steve’s shield—and it bounced off the back wall instead, ricocheting off of a support beam, and hurtling straight towards Bucky, who was running on a treadmill nearby. Sam didn’t even have time to warn him before Bucky caught sight of the rogue shield and swore as he held up a hand to protect his face._ _

__The shield collided with his metal forearm, sending him careening over the side rail of the treadmill, somersaulting ungracefully backwards, and finally skidding to a stop in a three-point crouch, having miraculously recovered his balance. The shield landed beside him with a clatter._ _

__“Shit.” Sam said eloquently. Bucky stood, inspecting the tiny new dent in his arm. “Sorry, Buck.”_ _

__Bucky shrugged and rolled his neck to work out a few kinks. “At least you actually hit something this time.”_ _

__There had been too many training sessions like this to count. Bucky ran, practiced knife drills, worked the bag for hours on end without tiring. And Sam was used to keeping up with him. But learning an entire new weapon style was about as easy said as it was done. Being Captain America had plenty of perks. More than he could count. And using the shield honestly was one of them. That thing was pretty badass. But sometimes he couldn’t help but feel like it was an obligation rather than a privilege. Sam came toward Bucky and returned the shield to its holster on his wrist. It was heavier than it looked._ _

__“Steve didn’t exactly leave an instruction manual.” He said, a little more bitterly than he intended. Bucky watched him as he moved back toward the targets. If nothing else, Sam was certainly persistent. He pulled the shield from the holster again and readied his aim._ _

__“You’ll get it.” Bucky said somewhat abruptly. Sam turned to face him with a raised eyebrow, but Bucky’s face was neutral and inscrutable._ _

__“You sound pretty confident.”_ _

__Bucky shrugged again. “I am confident that you’ll get it. A little less confident that you won’t kill me trying.”_ _

__Sam threw the shield towards a target, missing it again but at the very least he was able to catch it when it came ricocheting back. Bucky turned around and put his headphones back on; there was something almost smug in the way he resumed his jog. “Thanks…” Sam said slowly, sure that Bucky couldn’t hear him over the headphones._ _

__“You’re welcome.”_ _

__Sam turned back around to look at Bucky, surprised, but before he could speak, both of their phones abruptly chimed, though Bucky, who was still learning how to use his, fumbled to turn off his loud, incessant, default-tone ringing._ _

__“It’s from Peter.” Sam reported. “He says he’s trying on the suit...and that it’s going well.” He smiled up at Bucky._ _

__“Well that’s good to hear. I was starting to get a little worried about the kid.”_ _

__“Me too.” Sam agreed. The phones both pinged again, and both dropped their eyes to read it. “He’s thinking of going on patrol soon. I’m surprised, he seems to be improving much faster than I thought--”_ _

__Sam’s remark was cut off by the sound of Bucky’s phone chiming, this time alone, and this time with a call rather than a text. “It’s the kid.” He told Sam with a frown. Bucky raised the phone to his ear._ _

__“Hey, Queens.” He said. There was a short pop on the other end, something that could have been a breath, then silence. “Peter?” No response. Bucky pulled the phone away from his ear just in time to watch as he line disconnected._ _

__“What’s wrong?” Sam asked. “He okay?”_ _

__“I don’t know, he just hung up.” Bucky frowned and replaced the phone in his pocket. “He must have—“_ _

__FRIDAY’s voice interrupted them. “Captain Wilson, your results are ready.” She said serenely, unaware of the conversation she was interrupting._ _

__Sam had almost forgotten. There had been significant, suspiciously hydra-like activity over certain areas of Europe during the last few weeks, prompting Sam to have the AI run background data on a few individuals with known hydra affiliations. He returned the shield to the holster on his back. “Report.”_ _

__FRIDAY lit up the training room’s holoscreen with the data she’d sorted through. Sam stood in front of the screen to read her report while Bucky watched, then returned his attentions to the phone in his pocket, still bothered by Peter’s abrupt call. He couldn’t think of many reasons why Peter would call just to hang up. His worry grew in his stomach, a sense of foreboding he couldn't quite shake._ _

__“Looks like there’s some kind of hydra cell in France, of all places.” Sam was saying. “We might be in for our first real mission as the New Avengers. You speak like a billion languages, right? French one of them?”_ _

__“Conversationally.” Bucky answered a little absently. Had trying on the suit not gone as well as Peter claimed? Had something else gone wrong? Sam didn’t seem to notice Bucky’s distraction, and continued planning for their mission, still scanning details of FRIDAY’s report._ _

__“We should probably call the school and ask if they can reschedule our—“_ _

__“Do you think Peter speaks French?” Bucky asked abruptly. Sam blinked._ _

__“I—“ he narrowed his eyes. “Why?”_ _

__“I think he should come with us.” Bucky explained. “He said he wanted to go back on patrol…” and I’m worried about him, he thought, but didn’t say._ _

__Sam stepped away from the holoscreen. “Do you think he’s ready?” He put a hand on his hip and considered it. The kid had shown promise, that was abundantly clear. But whether or not he was ready to take on an entire Hydra cell…_ _

__“No.” Bucky answered plainly. “But I think he _thinks_ he’s ready. And I’d rather him be _not ready_ with us than alone.” _ _

__“You’ve got a point.” Sam said. “You always think you’re alright until you realize you aren’t...I’ll call his aunt for the go-ahead.”_ _

__Training apparently over, Bucky finally unplugged his headphones and stepped from the treadmill while Sam rang May. Trying not to be completely obvious, Bucky watched Sam from across the training room as he spoke on the phone. It struck him that he should likely find it strange, watching Sam finally be in charge, but he didn’t. In fact, in a way it was more natural than it had ever been, as if Sam was always meant to lead them. Bucky was glad for it. He’d never doubted Sam (though he’d die before he told Sam that), but after Steve left them, he’d been lost. He could tell that Sam was too, even if he was better at hiding it. He’d needed an anchor, and Sam was there._ _

__“What?” Sam suddenly said. Bucky blinked and realized Sam had hung up and was looking right at him._ _

__“Nothing.” He said quickly, rubbing the back of his neck and averting his eyes to the ground. “What did May say?”_ _

__“Thinks it’d be good for him. I’ll call the kid and ask him.”_ _

__“I got it.” Bucky said. He pulled out his phone to try and recover from the awkwardness of being caught staring. It was obvious that Sam noticed—not much got past him—but he didn’t mention it, much to Bucky’s relief. “Wouldn’t want Captain America to go intimidating him off of the mission.” He added with a smirk. Sam laughed once._ _

__“Says the guy with the huge metal arm.”_ _

__“Kids like the arm.” Bucky replied. “It’s very—shit. What’s the word these days? It was cool a few years ago, is it still cool?”_ _

__Sam moved back toward the holoscreen, face alight with a wry grin. “Not when we’re talking about you.”_ _

__“Very funny. Go plan our mission, _Captain._ I’ll call the kid.” Bucky left the training room, phone in hand, while Sam continued to chuckle._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little shorter, sorry! I'm bad at pacing! Hope you enjoyed it! More to come!


	3. The Mission, pt. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a little help from Bucky, Peter prepares for his first mission since their clash with Thanos. During his hunt for answers, an unwelcome guest complicates things.

Peter wasn’t surprised when Bucky called, having just hung up on him moments prior. He _was_ surprised though when Bucky asked him on a mission. 

“I—really?” He’d stuttered, like an idiot. “To where?” 

“Hydra cell in Northern France. Sam and I are tracking some new sect and could use your help.”

Peter had swallowed then. “Uh...you sure you want _me_ to go?”

“Sure.” Bucky replied easily. “Unless you want to sit this one out, which is fine, by the w—“

“No!” Peter had nearly shouted. “No, that’s okay, I got it.” He couldn’t let Bucky and Sam think he wasn’t ready. They already doubted him enough; saying no to what should have been the most exciting mission yet would only make that worse. 

There was just one problem. 

After they’d hung up, and Peter had made his arrangements with May for when he’d leave--the next evening--he returned to his room and grabbed the suit he’d discarded angrily just a few moments prior. He could hardly stand to look at it, let alone pull the mask back over his head and face the uncanny new AI that now populated his heads-up display. And he’d have to be wearing, and fighting in, the full suit in less than 48 hours. 

His first order of business was to try to undo the update without putting the mask back on. Ned has always been better at programing than he was, meaning that Peter doubted he could remove the AI on his own. But what kind of phone call was _that_ to make? _“Hey Ned, hope you’re not busy, but Tony Stark’s ghost-clone is haunting my Spider-Man suit, would you mind helping me remove him?”_

  
So that was out. 

Instead, Peter sat cross-legged on the floor with his laptop balanced on one knee, typing in an html box and trying to learn to read code overnight. It wasn’t particularly fruitful; the codes Tony had written prior to his death were as complex as they were air-tight. After about an hour, Peter gave up and set about trying to disable the AI completely and reinstate Tony’s old _Training Wheels_ protocol. 

With that endeavor he found himself slightly more successful, but a text from Sam detailing the itinerary of the mission tomorrow made him pause as he typed. The mission was probably going to be difficult enough even _with_ the option to keep the AI’s help. He wasn’t sure if it was wise to completely disable the other options of the suit the night before a mission to a hydra base. 

Peter sighed and pulled the usb cord from the suit in despair. By then it was long into the early hours of morning, and he still had school the next day. “Damn it, Tony.” he whispered miserably to himself. “Why me?” He settled on muting the AI, temporarily turning it off without removing it from the suit completely. 

The next day he couldn’t focus in class. That wasn’t unusual for him these days, but this time it was much worse than normal. It seemed like everywhere he went he heard the ghost of Tony’s voice. Just like old times, at the end of the day it was Happy in one of Tony’s cars that picked him up. 

“Hey, Pete.” Happy greeted. Two words and Peter could already tell his tone was different than usual. It was cautious and gentle, as if worried that Peter might break. Peter was a little worried himself. 

“Hi, Happy.” He breathed. Aside from the occasional text, Peter hadn’t heard much from Happy for the past few months. Not like the early days of their friendship, where Peter would send him 50 updates a day. He realized all at once how much he’d missed him. He opened his mouth to speak but didn’t trust his voice not to break. 

Luckily, Happy spoke for him. “It’s good to see you again, kid. How you been holding up?” 

“Good.” Peter lied automatically. Happy glanced at him in the rearview, clearly not believing a word, but didn’t call him out on it, much to Peter’s relief. Instead, he asked him how school was going, what he’d been up to, if he was excited for the mission. Peter readily offered information, glad to be focusing on something other than the AI waiting for him in the suit in his backpack. He even went so far as to pull his French-English dictionary from his pocket and practice some of his horrible French. 

In a short moment of silence between them, Peter looked down at his shoes. “H-how’s Morgan and Pepper?” He could see Happy stiffen. 

“They’re holding up alright. You know Pepper, she hasn’t even slowed down. Morgan just started kindergarten, she’s already smarter than all of her teachers and makes sure they all know.” 

Peter laughed. “Yeah I bet she does…” 

“They ask about you all the time.” Happy said. “Especially Morgan.” 

He perked up in his seat. “Really?”

Happy laughed. “Oh, yeah. According to Pepper, Tony used to tell her all kinds of stories about you. She’s always asking me where Spider-Man is.”

“Oh.” That hurt. Peter dropped his eyes again and leaned back in his seat, as Happy was quick to backpedal. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to…I’m not trying to—“

Peter shook his head. “No, it’s okay. She’s right.” He remembered meeting her for the first time, at Tony’s funeral. Too young to quite grasp what had happened, but with a tear-streaked face nonetheless, she’d still managed an excited smile when she first saw him. She deserved to know what had happened to him. “But you can tell her that Spider-Man is back.”

Happy smiled at him in the rear view. “That’s good to hear. You should stop by the cabin sometime. She and Pepper would love to see you.”

 _I know somebody else they’d love to see_ , Peter thought. He was carrying Morgan’s father around in his backpack for christ’s sake. He almost told Happy right then and there about the hologram that leaned so casually against the wall of his bedroom. But if seeing the blue static approximation of Tony was jarring for _him_ , he couldn’t even imagine what Morgan and Pepper would think. He stifled the urge and instead just accepted Happy’s invitation and the opportunity to move on from the topic. 

The new avenger’s compound was built a few miles from the original, which had become a memorial site for Iron Man, Black Widow and the others who died during it as a result of their clash with Thanos. Peter watched it pass through the car’s tinted windows as the new compound came into view. 

Bucky, rather than Sam (as he expected), was waiting for him in the large driveway. He smiled and put a hand on down Peter’s shoulder as a greeting, asking him how he’d been. Again, Peter lied easily. He was sure both Bucky and Sam would notice that something was off with him—nothing much got past them—but they didn’t mention it, both deciding instead to focus on the mission debriefing and preparation. 

“We’ve been tracking known Hydra agents since everything went down with SHIELD. It took a bit of doing, but for the past few weeks I’ve been importing our data into FRIDAY to keep tabs on their whereabouts and activity.” Sam was explaining. “We’ve been getting hits in France for more than a week now, and yesterday FRIDAY finally pinned down a location.”

The three of them stopped in front of a massive holoscreen, so large and impressive that Peter couldn’t help but stare with wide eyes and a dropped jaw at the bluish images that passed across it. The holoscreen showed them a few faces, a map, several copies of correspondence and other files. Sam pointed at the map, and FRIDAY, intuitive as the AI was, immediately zoomed in towards the blinking red light towards the north. 

“We believe this to be their base. It looks like they’re starting to ramp up their activity in the area, like they’re planning something.”

Peter nodded in understanding. Already, this felt about 50 leagues over his head. Sure, he’d help save the universe, but that was less a planned mission and more a field trip that had gone horribly wrong. Sam explained the details as if Peter were his equal, another member of the team, as opposed to just some punk kid who was thrown into something far above his pay grade.

“This mission is mostly to gain information. We’re not trying to mount a massive attack yet. And that’s where you come in.” Sam turned away from the screen and towards Peter. “Bucky and I are soldiers. He’s more spy than I am, but we still sort of stick out like a sore thumb. You’re smaller, faster, and quieter than either of us.”

“Sam and I will do the heavy hitting, if we need to. You can sneak in, gather intel with our direction, and we can all get out of there without causing too much of a disturbance.” Bucky agreed. 

Peter tried not to sound as nervous as he felt. “Okay.” he said as confidently as he could manage. “I can do that.” 

Except that put another wrench in his situation. As they packed their supplies and weapons for the trip, Peter’s anxiety began to mount. It didn’t improve once they were actually on the jet, alone with just the three of them and the passing ocean outside. 

He hadn’t been on many stealth missions, but if he knew one thing, it was that missions like this were nearly impossible without _some_ kind of radar system, heads-up display, or AI guiding him through it. Sam and Bucky could use the comms to guide him through whatever compound they were headed for, but without being able to see through his eyes, Peter was going to have to rely only on his spidey sense and his own wits, because there was no way in hell he’d enable his new AI. 

They landed in Paris early in the morning Paris-time, jet-lagged and foggy. Sam was all-business as he made arrangements for their hotel room and rented car, though it was Bucky who spoke fluent French and acted as interpreter. They’d both donned disguises to keep from being recognized, Sam with a pair of fake eyeglasses and a baseball cap and Bucky with his hair pulled up into a bun and a heavy overcoat. Peter didn’t have to work under the same conditions, since nobody knew who he was anyway. 

The three of them had the day to make it to their suite and settle in, try to catch up on missed sleep, and prepare for the mission. It was about an hour drive through the French countryside to their hotel room, a suite with two adjoining rooms, one for Peter and one for Sam and Bucky to share. While unpacking, Bucky found his mind wandering to Peter, uncharacteristically quiet in the next room. 

“I don’t think he’s said more than ten words since he got here.” He commented to Sam, who was disassembling a handgun to clean it at the computer table on the far side of the room. 

“I know, it’s kind of freaky, isn’t it?” Sam set the gun down and looked back up. “I mean the kid introduced himself to every last person on the battlefield even _during a fight with Thanos._ And now he’s total silent treatment.” 

Bucky shook his head. “He’s going to be completely in his head during the mission.” He murmured. After a moment, he grabbed his jacket again and shrugged it on. “Can you handle things here? I think he needs to get out for a bit.”

“Good call.” Sam nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort, but you’re gonna owe me one.” He added with a grin. 

Bucky chuckled. “Aye aye, Captain. I’ll pack everything up afterwards.” he said before rapping his knuckles against the door that separated their room from Peter’s. 

“Hey Queens!” He called, then had to step back as Peter yanked the door open, halfway in his suit. 

“What’s wrong?!” Peter asked quickly, looking as though he was moments away from throwing hands with some unseen force. He relaxed as Bucky held up his hands as if in surrender. 

“Whoa, stand down, kid.” He said. Peter was wound tight as a drum; he wouldn’t be any help to them at all on the mission if he was this stressed. “I just wanted to ask if you were hungry.”

“Oh.” Peter visibly relaxed and stepped out of the suit he was halfway in. “Well, I guess a little...I’m okay though, why?”

Bucky nodded towards the door. “There’s a market a few minutes from here. Let’s go practice your French a little.” 

“Shouldn’t we like, prepare for the mission or...something?” Peter asked nervously. Bucky grinned at him. 

“I won’t tell Sam.” Sam, from just a few feet behind him, let out a quick laugh. “C’mon kid, can’t go on a mission on an empty stomach.” He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and guided him gently to the door. 

It didn’t take long for Peter to begin to relax as Bucky lead him through the quaint French marketplace, testing his French by allowing him to try to talk to shopkeepers without his help. It was almost comedic, how horrible Peter’s French was, but Bucky took it in stride (and apologized to several shopkeepers on the kid’s behalf). 

Peter’s exuberance was so familiar it made him ache. His quiet nervousness had given way to a kid that was off the walls excited just to be there eating crepes and speaking broken, horrible French. Bucky allowed Peter to lead him through the marketplace and point out items of interest. For those few moments, Bucky was thrust back in time, back before everything had broken apart. He was 19 again, trying to keep up with a certain over-exuberant punk who didn’t have an off switch. At least Peter wasn’t picking fights. Yet.

Still, every few moments Peter’s face would abruptly fall, mostly when he thought Bucky wasn’t looking, as if only just then remembering something. It was a cycle Bucky had found himself caught in more than a few times, especially these days. The next time it happened, Bucky decided he’d finally bring it up. 

“ _Aimez-vous?_ ” Bucky asked as Peter watched the water flow beneath the bridge where they’d stopped. Peter smiled, still watching the water. 

“ _Oui_.” He answered, which pretty much exhausted his French vocabulary. “It’s just like Ratatouille.” 

“The food?” Bucky asked with a frown. Peter laughed and shook his head.

“No, I mean the movie. Well, nevermind.” It was then that his face fell and he returned his eyes to the water, the mirth melting away as quickly as it had come. Bucky watched him for a second. 

“You nervous? For the mission?” 

Peter exhaled. “Yeah.” Bucky waited. “I just...I don’t want to mess it up. It’s the first mission I’ve been on since…” he trailed off, but Bucky got the point. 

“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “This is the first mission we’ve been on too. It’s going to be different, I won’t pretend it’s not.”

Peter hadn’t actually thought about that. He didn’t know Bucky well, but he’d watched the news enough to understand how lost Bucky might be feeling without Steve. It had shocked him, too, when the news broke that Steve had left them. They seemed so inseparable. And not just Bucky, either. Steve and Sam had been inseparable too. It had been just the three of them against the world, quite literally, for quite some time. Peter swallowed. 

“I’m sorry.” He said, because it felt like the right thing to say. “We were all pretty shocked when Captain Rogers left.”

“It’s alright.” Bucky said. “We’ve got Sam.” He meant the both of them, the _all_ of them. When the world had nothing, it had Sam Wilson. “He’s been keeping us together.” Peter nodded his agreement before Bucky stopped himself and began to backpedal. Peter’s ability to get him to let his guard down was uncanny. It rivaled Steve’s, he realized with a pang. “But Sam or no Sam, it’s going to feel different. It’s going to be really hard for a while, I won’t lie.”

Peter nodded again. “It just...well, it just feels like…” he paused and tried to think. It felt like he was going in blind. No AI to talk him through the mission, and no Tony to report back to. “It feels lonely.” He finally finished. 

He expected Bucky to disagree, to disprove the statement and give him some comforting adage. But instead, Bucky just put a hand on his shoulder and allowed the silence to hang in the air between them for a few minutes. 

“I know.” Bucky eventually said, and Peter was sure he did.

\---

If Peter had felt out of place _before_ , by the time he was seated in the back of the sleek black rental car with Sam and Bucky, both fully clad in their respective suits and armed to the teeth, he was starting to think he might be dreaming. Bucky and Sam were quiet until Sam turned off the headlights and parked the car. 

“Alright, we all clear on the plan?” He asked as he tightened the holster strap for his shields checking again to ensure it was secure. 

“Yup.” Bucky said, sliding the magazine from one of his guns and replacing it. 

Peter exhaled slowly and adjusted his webshooters, not because he wanted to make sure they worked but because they both had checked their gear and he didn’t want to feel left out. “I’m ready.” His fingers shook a little as he pulled his mask on, but Sam and Bucky didn’t notice. 

_It’s just a costume. Just a costume._

“Spidey, your mask tuned to our frequency?” Sam asked, speaking into the communicator on his wrist. Peter gave a thumbs up as he heard Sam’s voice echo within the tiny speaker of his mask. 

“Alright.” Sam said. “Let’s do this.” 

Sam lead them in a jog, though Peter swung ahead to perch on a windowsill and peek inside. His HUD was bare bones; no vitals read outs, no motion sensing or heat tracking, just an empty blue-framed screen with empty displays. 

“No one in the front room.” He reported. “Place looks abandoned.”

“Probably a back room or bunker somewhere.” Bucky pointed out over the comms. “See any security cameras or devices around the perimeter?” 

“I didn’t scan any.” Sam said. “That’s unusual for Hydra. Head inside, Spidey, and stay sharp. We’re right behind you.” He nodded at Bucky and they both moved in, combat crouched, as Peter gently tried pushing the window open. To his surprise, it opened easily, though with a tiny creak. 

“I’m in.” Peter murmured. “Windows unlocked. Talk about hiding in plain sight.” He leaped down from the sill, landing silently on three points, taking in his surroundings, the silent and stale air of the old factory. His spidey sense, too, was silent. “Nobody here. At least not on the top floor.” 

As he said it, the front door opened and Sam and Bucky both entered, both with guns and shields raised. Once they saw it for themselves, both lowered their weapons and looked around. Bucky’s brow was furrowed deeply, giving him a dangerously dark aura. “It’s too quiet in here.” He said with a low voice. “This doesn’t feel right.” 

Peter’s feet crunched over broken glass and dust as he examined the dark space. At least the mask still had nightvision. Eventually his eyes landed on an output grate for the air vents. He webbed up to it and pulled it open. “I’ll go see what I can see.”

“Be careful, kid.” Sam said. “Stay open on the comms.” Peter nodded quickly before jumping up into the vent and crawling across its rusted metal walls, sticking effortlessly to the surface as he explored the dark, cramped space. 

The space was nearly pitch-black and filthy; Peter left shining chrome fingerprints where his gloves rubbed off what appeared to be decades worth of grime. His heart pounded both from excitement and fear; he was doing what he loved, but in the unfamiliar, cramped space, without even Karen the suit lady to keep him company, it didn’t really feel like it. 

He eventually reached a vertical shaft leading to what he assumed was a basement (he sure wished he had a map of the vent system). Peter perched there for a moment before securing a web to the highest point and preparing to lower himself down. “The vents go down right here, probably to a basement.” He reported over the comms. 

“Roger that.” Sam replied. 

With a somewhat shaky exhale, Peter began his descent. Halfway down, he heard another voice. One that was undistorted by the communication systems. 

“—manual override. Peter? Can you hear me?” 

His fingers nearly slipped from the thread of his spider silk in shock, forcing him to grab onto the side of the vent for support. “Wh—how are you doing that? Disable AI!” 

Tony’s voice was urgent in his ear as the systems on his HUD began to boot up. “Peter, you need to stop this _now._ Going down there blind is going to get you killed!” 

“ _You’re_ going to get me killed!” Peter argued in an enraged hiss. “How the hell can an AI disable its user’s coding?” 

“By not being an AI!” Tony said quickly. “I tried to tell you, there is nothing artificial about me! I think and adapt in real time, so I rewrote your coding.” 

“Rewrite yourself to _shut up_!” Peter commanded. “I need to focus!” The AI’s voice was already bringing back scenes of the ruined compound to Peter’s mind. His breaths were beginning to catch in his throat. 

“You need to listen to me!” Tony countered

Another voice jolted him and nearly made him fall _again._

“Spidey? What’s going on down there? Your vitals are going nuts.” Sam asked. 

Peter steadied himself against the air vent. “Uh I’m—it’s fine. I just almost fell is all. I think I’m getting close to where the agents are hiding out.” 

Tony immediately started up again the moment Peter stopped. “You’re rappelling into a bunker full of people who want to kill you!” As he spoke, heat signatures beneath him lit up Peter’s HUD; there were more than a dozen, all huddled in what looked to be one room at the bottom of the shaft. Peter swallowed. “I don’t know what the hell has gotten into you, but you cannot do this alone.” 

That struck a nerve. Peter set his jaw and hissed, “Mute AI system.” 

“Peter—”

“I said _mute_!” Peter growled a little too loudly. He quickly reigned himself in, but remained no less angry. “I don’t need help from you or anybody else! Now leave me alone before I blow this mission!” 

There was a brief moment of silent tension before a small message displayed itself on Peter’s screen. _Voice assist disabled._ He sighed in relief and continued down the shaft until he reached the bottom. 

With the AI disabled, Peter really did feel kind of blind. The moment his feet hit the floor his spidey sense blared in his head like an alarm he couldn’t turn off, and his enhanced hearing began to pick up distant voices. A _lot_ of them. He crept forward, raising two fingers to his ear. 

“I found them.” He whispered to Sam and Bucky. 

“How many?” Came Bucky’s voice. 

Peter moved a little further down the vent until he found a grate to peer through. “A dozen, at least.” he breathed. The men in the room milled around; many were sitting at computers but many more were reading through files, chatting amongst themselves, or, Peter realized with a flutter of his heartbeat, cleaning firearms. “It doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.” 

There was a brief pause on the other end, during which Peter watched the men move and tried to pin down their pattern, find an opening, and make a move of his own. “You up for a change of plans, kid?” 

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Peter had just slid the grate away from the vent, opening up his route to getting a closer look at the files and computers. 

“Bucky and I are going to make a distraction up top so you can get the information we need. I didn’t want to make a scene but we may never get another opportunity like this.” 

“Okay…” Peter began. “I’ll go as fast as I can. You guys sure you can hold them off? They’ve got guns.”

“So do we.” Bucky responded. “You ready to run, kid?” 

Peter gripped the edge of the vent with fingers that shook just a little more than he would have liked, and eyed his target: a large table full of files beside a computer. He could do this. “Ready.” His voice was barely audible, barely above a whisper, but still sure and steady. A beat of silence before he sucked in a breath and continued,

“Go.”


	4. The Mission, pt. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's change of plans works fine, until it doesn't. Later, all three of them debrief what they found and confront a few things unspoken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING:  
> This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence and injury.
> 
> Happy 4th of July! Here's an early update just to celebrate reaching 1000 notes. Enjoy!

On the floor above, after hearing Peter's call to action, Sam and Bucky began to shout to one another as if they'd only just then entered the compound. Peter could hear their calls from the floor below; the agents could hear it too. The room abruptly exploded with frantic activity as the men gathered weapons and made for the staircase, leaving their files behind. After just a few moments, piercingly loud gunshots split the otherwise quiet air. Peter took a deep breath before he crawled out from the vent.

“ _Man_ I wish Ned were here.” Peter whispered to himself as he sat down at the computer. Most of the information was in a different language, so he thanked his uncharacteristically good Parker luck that the men had left the computers open and logged on. He pulled out a micro usb cord from a small port on his suit, inserting it in the wrong way the first two times. “Oh man I always get this thing wrong.” 

Peter’s leg bounced nervously while he waited for the data to upload into his suit’s system. In the meantime, he rifled through some of the stray files on the table, photographing each with the recorder in his mask. His spidey sense blared the whole way through; his hands shook so badly he could barely hold the files steady enough to take their picture. 

The download hovered at 98% when the comms went off again. “Spidey, finish up, it’s about time to spl—oh shit—” Sam’s voice cut off with a loud bang. 

“I’m coming!” Peter yelled back, standing up at the desk and shifting his weight “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” 

“Peter!” A voice said suddenly. Peter nearly leapt out of the seat in surprise. “You’ve got to get out of here!” It was Tony’s voice again. 

“No shit!” Peter shouted in response. Footsteps were coming down the stairwell towards him, no doubt armed. “Come on you stupid shitty usb—“ Finally, the screen lit up with a message in a different language and showed an icon of a usb being unplugged. He stood. 

“Yes!” 

“Peter!” The AI shouted. 

“Hey!” Came a third voice. 

Peter whipped around just in time to stare down the barrel of a semi automatic rifle.

He swore and leapt onto the ceiling, just barely missing the man’s first few shots. He kept firing and Peter kept dodging; he was a step ahead of the man, but his lead was slipping. One of the bullets grazed his hip as he sent out a web in each hand to practically vault himself onto the next floor. 

“Peter, you’re hit!” 

“I know! Do _you_ know what _mute_ means?” Peter’s jaw was clenched tight. He swung into the main room where Sam was stepping in front of Bucky to shield them both from gunfire that rained on them from two men with rifles that were rapidly advancing. Peter swung down and webbed both of their guns at once, swung them like a hammer-throw, and tossed them away. 

“Nice work, Queens!” Bucky praised. His face spread into a grin as he moved out from behind Sam’s shield. The men backpedaled, and Peter couldn’t blame them. The winter soldier stalking towards you like a predator was sure to strike fear into anyone. “Let’s take them down and we’ll get out of here.”

“I’ve got the data!” Peter said, swinging down again to kick an assailant with both feet. The wound on his side stretched painfully, but for the moment he ignored it. But that stubborn, too-familiar voice wouldn’t let him ignore it for long. 

“You’re losing blood, Peter. You can’t keep fighting like this.” 

That _voice_ . It was so wrong, so jarring to hear a voice that should never have come back, that it almost made Peter sick to his stomach. It was Tony’s voice, sounding so genuinely concerned for his safety that for a moment Peter was caught up in the fantasy that it really _was_ him, that if he just turned the right way, looked at just the right time, he’d see him standing there. _Really_ him. And he’d give him a crooked smile, or one of his worried, deep-set frowns, Peter would feel his hand on his shoulder and Tony would ask _“you alright, kid?”_. 

His spidey sense had been blaring for the better part of the entire fight, becoming more background noise than anything. At that moment, though, it alarmed so loudly that Peter was torn from the fantasy and shoved back to reality. Someone was shouting at him. 

“Spidey, look out—!”

Peter realized too late that he was in the crosshairs of one of the Hydra agents. He tried to swing away but the man fired first. His bullet slammed into Peter’s lower leg and shattered out the other side. 

With a high yelp, Peter tumbled from the air and hit the ground hard, pain exploding from the wound. Sam and Bucky both swore, practically in unison, while Peter’s hands reflexively shot out to grab at his leg. 

“The bullet went straight through and out the other side. Your tibia and fibula are both broken.” The AI said in his ear. _Yeah, he could have guessed that much._ He rolled behind an old rusted machine for cover and glanced at the wound; blood was already soaking through the fabric of the suit. “We should hold pressure.” The AI said, and all at once the suit around his leg began to clamp down against his leg to quell the bleeding.

Bucky stopped fighting and turned to Sam for direction. He was used to his comrades being injured during fights, but not when his comrades were 16 years old. 

“Stay with Spider-Man.” Sam ordered quickly. Then, turning back to the fight, he gripped the shield and set his jaw. “I got this.” 

Sam vaulted over the machinery and hurled the shield at the few remaining agents. It flew past them, which allowed the three to drop their guard and advance on Sam, but just as in the training room, the shield bounced back off of the wall behind them and came hurtling back. 

The shield hit the two closest agents one right after the other like a pinball, knocking them both to the ground as easily as anything before returning obediently to Sam’s holster on his wrist. Though Bucky was focused on Peter, he didn’t miss the triumphant grin on Sam’s face. And the fear in the eyes of the agent he stalked toward, the shield cocked and ready. 

Peter couldn’t watch. His head was leaned back against the concrete floor, eyes squeezed tightly shut in a failing attempt at keeping the pain under control. The AI in the mask wouldn’t shut up. 

“Can you hear me, kid? Peter—“

His voice was cut off by Bucky’s voice, but when Bucky spoke, Peter could actually feel the man’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey, can you hear me?” Bucky asked. 

“I’m fine, it’s fine.” Peter answered the both of them, trying to sit up. 

“It’s _not_ fine, you’ve been shot! Your heart rate is off the charts—“ 

“Whoa, stand down, Queens.” Bucky said, seeming to agree with the voice he could not hear. His metal hand was ice cold against the suit, but strong; at the very least, it was strong enough to stop Peter’s attempts at standing. “We’ll get you out of here and get you to a hospital.” Bucky prodded gently at Peter’s wound, just as the AI had. 

“No, no hospital--” 

“But--” Both Bucky and the AI said. 

“I’ve got a healing factor.” Peter explained tightly. “It’s fine.”

“Like hell it's fine!” Came Tony’s voice through the mask. To Peter’s dismay, a bluish hologram was glitching to life just behind Bucky’s shoulder. “You’ve never been _shot_ before!” The hologram said. 

Bucky raised an eyebrow but didn’t take his hand from Peter’s shoulder. “Does it cover gunshots?”

Peter closed his eyes again to keep from seeing the hologram as it crossed its arms. “It’s covered worse.”

Tony’s hologram paced, as if the collection of ones and zeros was concerned for him. “Your heart rate is pushing 180. And can your healing factor reset bones?” 

“God, shut _up_!” Peter hissed. Bucky’s eyebrows raised. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Not you.” Peter rolled over to push himself up onto his elbow. The blood was already starting to slow, but he supposed Tony had a point. His healing factor was probably fusing his bones together in the wrong position. When he looked up again, Sam was returning his shield to his back and kneeling beside them, and Peter decided he’d cross that bridge when they got there. 

“Shit, Peter—“ Sam began, voice tight. Bucky glanced up to see that Sam’s brow was lifted high, his hands hovered over Peter for a moment as if he didn’t know what to do with them. If Bucky didn’t know better, he’d say Sam almost looked frightened. 

“He’s alright. Healing factor.” Bucky explained quickly. He could see the stress leaving Sam’s body along with a short breath. Peter continued to push himself up until he was sitting, with Bucky’s help. 

“I’m good.” Peter managed. “I’m sorry, Captain Wilson, I—I was distracted and I—“ 

“ _Hey._ You did great, Peter. Webbing those guys’ guns away? That kick? That was awesome, man!” Sam emphasized. “Good work.” Peter was glad for the mask, his face flushing hot. Almost as if sensing Peter’s embarrassment, Sam moved slightly back. “Can you walk?” 

“Uh—“ Peter was sure he couldn’t, but didn’t want to make Sam and Bucky’s opinion of him any worse. Before he could respond, the AI did. 

“I got it.” Came Tony’s voice as the metal legs of the Iron Spider suit came popping out from Peter’s back to help support his weight. “We’re going to have to reset that leg, kid.” There was real sorrow in the hologram’s eyes. Peter set his jaw. There was the _approximation_ of real sorrow. 

Bucky and Sam helped Peter to the car, though the AI did most of the heavy lifting as it controlled the golden appendages that sprang from Peter’s back. He handed Bucky both the flash drive and the loose files he’d found in the agents’ lair, then leaned back in the backseat and closed his eyes. 

***

Bucky and Sam could both tell that Peter was done for the night, so neither attempted to involve him in their mostly-business discussion of the files Bucky translated. They could save it for the morning. 

By the time they’d returned to their hotel home-base, Peter was looking positively wrecked. He barely seemed to register that Bucky was speaking to him. 

“Peter, are you _sure_ you don’t need a hospital?”

“Oh yeah.” Peter said too quickly. “I’ll be fine, the healing factor will take care of it.”

Sam eyed him suspiciously. The bleeding in his leg had stopped, though it was still crooked, but it still looked significantly better than it had in the warehouse. He wasn’t exactly an expert on this whole _magic_ thing. It had taken him years to get used to Steve’s enhancements. So he took Peter’s word for it and allowed the kid to shut the door between their suites and be alone. 

Bucky sat down on the bed and rubbed his neck. “That...didn’t go as well as I thought.” He groaned. Sam moved beside him and playfully tapped at his leg. 

“Hey, no resting for you yet. You’re on cleanup duty, remember?” Bucky groaned again and stood up while Sam laughed and reclined against the bed, suddenly exhausted. “Honestly, I think this was what the kid needed.”

“A bullet in the leg?” Bucky asked sourly. He shrugged off his armored coat and stretched his shoulders. 

Sam looked up. “Don’t be a jackass.” He said with a tired grin. “You know what I mean.”

Bucky smiled back (Sam’s smiles were contagious that way), though these days a smile on Bucky was less of a smile and more just an expression in which he was not frowning. “Things get worse before they get better.” He agreed. “I just hate to see the kid so...wrecked.”

“I know.” Sam became serious. “All of this is hard enough without adding on the baseline ordeal of being sixteen.” 

Bucky laughed once. He couldn’t remember much from his youth. He couldn’t remember much from anything, with half of his mind having been corrupted by hydra, then damaged by attempts to bring him back. But most things before the war were still there, even if they were tarnished, like viewing a movie through frosted glass. If there was one thing he knew though, it’s that he probably wouldn’t have survived being 16 if it weren’t for—

The smile dropped off his face as if somebody had slapped it off. Sam noticed and sat up, watching carefully as Bucky abruptly straightened, then turned away from him to resume cleaning, unloading, and disassembling their guns in silence. 

“Buck?”

He turned around and saw the way Sam was watching him, having sat up; there was something gentle in the way his eyebrow raised, his eyes searching. The corner of Bucky’s lip twitched up. When he had no one else, he had Sam. “Aren’t you supposed to be relaxing?” He joked, glad to shift the focus from his own aching back to he and Sam’s usual rapport. Sam laughed and leaned back again. 

“You think they have room service at—” he checked his watch. “Midnight? You wanna go buy me something from the vending machine?” 

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Don’t push it.”

“Aw, come on. Haven’t I earned French vending machine candy?”

“Actually, you got me there.” Bucky admitted. He lifted the shield to wipe it down on Sam’s behalf, as he’d promised. “I was right after all. I told you you’d get it.” 

Sam stared up at the ceiling; this time it was his turn to become serious as his smile faded. “I’ve got a long way to go.” 

“Sure.” Bucky conceded. “But for what it’s worth, you’ve—I mean,” he rubbed his neck. “This suits you. You’re good at it, this whole _Cap_ thing.”

To his surprise, Sam didn’t shrug off the complement with a joke, nor did he flash an easy grin and give him a self-assured remark about how much he loved his new title. Instead, he kept his eyes on the ceiling and didn’t move aside from his jaw quickly tensing, then relaxing again. “Thanks.” He said simply. 

Bucky had seen him react this way a few times, like tiny cracks in the confident, self-assured facade he’d been building up. But he’d only done it when someone else brought up his new mantle. “Sam.” He called softly. Sam finally looked at him. “That bothers you.” He said.

“It doesn’t _bother_ me.” Sam said defensively. “It’s—“ he sighed a little explosively and rubbed at his neck. Bucky waited. 

Sam looked at the shield that Bucky had just finished cleaning. It glimmered in the low lamplight of their hotel room. “Doesn’t it ever get to you, Buck?” He asked. “I mean, it should get to you more than me.”

“Doesn’t what get to me?”

“C’mon, Bucky.” Sam begged, a bit more venomous than he’d meant. “All of this!” He gestured vaguely. “He _abandoned_ us.”

That knocked the wind out of Bucky. He stood there helplessly for a moment before crossing the room to sit beside Sam on the bed. He’d broken the floodgates and said what the both of them had been avoiding for months. It had been so much easier not to bring it up, to just keep operating as if nothing were different, to keep lying to themselves and each other. They were fine. It didn’t matter. Worst—and most common—of them, that it was better off this way. Their knees brushed together as they sat side by side on the bed. Bucky abruptly realized there was only one in the room. 

“It was where he belonged.” Bucky whispered. 

“How can you say that?” Sam demanded, turning towards him. “We were his best friends! His _family_! And he left us behind!” 

Bucky had told Steve once that he wasn’t sure he was worth all of the trouble Steve--and Sam--were putting in to get him to safety. Since returning to Steve’s life all he had down was wreak havoc. “ _You_ were his family.” he said. _I was a nuisance,_ he did not. 

To his surprise, Sam laughed, though it was sharp and mirthless. “Sure, and what does that make you, chopped liver? Bucky, we tore up the world trying to find you for nearly five years.”

There was a short beat of silence between them, during which Sam began to genuinely wonder what Bucky would say to that. Once it had gone on for a few minutes, it was beginning to worry him. Finally, Bucky hung his head beside him, eyes shut tight as his long brown hair fell like a curtain across his face. 

“I told him once I didn’t think I was worth the trouble.” He admitted in a whisper. “I guess he agreed.”

Sam’s mouth hung open for a moment, watching Bucky as he slowly opened his eyes, but didn’t look at him. Sam knew that Bucky was a talented liar, but the soft, resigned tone he took betrayed his neutral expression. After everything they’d been through, and Bucky still wasn’t getting the picture. Sam couldn’t help but blame that on Steve. After what felt like a long moment of searching his face, Sam harrumphed and turned away, though their shoulders remained touching. 

“Well.” He said hotly, crossing his arms. “I don’t.”

Bucky turned toward him, shocked that Sam would admit such a thing without immediately following it up with a joke at his expense. He couldn’t think of any way to express that, so instead he elected to stare dumbly at Sam’s set jaw and bright, sure expression. Sam finally leaned back against the bed, playfully shoving Bucky forward and effectively ending whatever moment was happening between them. 

“Don’t you have weapons to clean?” He asked sarcastically. Bucky chuckled and stood to obey, not daring to look back, lest Sam catch sight of the faint pink blush that lit his cheeks.   


***

Peter had only only half-listened while Bucky and Sam discussed the files, Bucky translating them from French to read aloud to Sam. He leaned against the window and breathed as evenly as he could. The pain was subsiding, but he knew it would only worsen whenever he managed to reset his leg. 

He waved them away once they made it back to their suite for the night, insisting that his healing factor would take care of it. The both of them looked like they didn’t believe him for a moment, but Peter insisted, and eventually shut the door on them, then limped to the hotel bed and collapsed onto it. He rested his elbows on his knees and gingerly pulled the mask from his face and his phone from his pocket. 

May, Ned, and Happy had all texted him, asking how France was and how the mission was going. Ned had texted more than the others, also sending him several memes and a few rants about the video game they were playing. Peter almost smiled; reading Ned’s texts, he could practically hear his friend’s exuberant tone, practically see his warm, wide-faced smile. It would be so easy, Peter thought, just to text Ned. Just to tell him everything. He’d said about a thousand times that he could talk to him, and Peter never expected to take him up on the offer, but that was before everything had broken open into the mess it had become. His thumb hovered over Ned’s contact, shaking. 

After a moment, he put the phone down with a shaking sigh. 

“Peter.” Someone said. That voice. All day, he’d been met with nothing but anger when he heard that voice. But in that quiet moment, all alone in his hotel room, he found himself biting back hot tears the moment it met his ears. He didn’t speak, just looked up to find that his discarded mask was projecting Tony’s hologram in front of him.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Peter asked, hopeless. Defeated. The hologram knelt down, looking, ironically enough, haunted. 

“I…found a way to reset your leg.” It said. Somehow, it sounded like an apology. 

Peter looked down at his leg, which had stopped bleeding but now hung crooked and twisted from his knee. He didn’t speak, knowing Tony couldn’t go five seconds without hearing himself talk. _The AI_ , Peter corrected himself. _Not Tony_. 

“Your suit already had the microrobotics to allow it to move itself, so I uploaded a few anatomical schematics and wrote a program for it.” The hologram explained. “We should get Sam and Barnes, they’ll help--”

“No.” Peter stood with the help of the suit’s spider legs. “We can do it ourselves.”

“Kid, I get what you’re trying to do but this is really going to hurt--” 

“Yeah, I know.” Peter replied as he limped to the bathroom, shut the door, and stuffed a towel beneath it, soundproofing the space the best he could in case he cried out in pain. “Let’s just get it over with.” He sat down on the floor and held his injured leg straight out; the hologram knelt down beside him.

“The suit will clamp down on your leg at a very high speed to move the bones back into alignment. It shouldn’t take longer than a few seconds, but it is going to hurt.” He explained. Peter nodded, rolling up a washcloth to stuff in his mouth, then looking back up to the hologram, a silent signal that he was ready. 

“Alright.” The hologram put a hand on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter gasped around the washcloth; apparently Tony had also programmed the suit’s microrobotics to react accordingly when the hologram “touched” him, squeezing Peter’s shoulder gently as if Tony really were there. Peter didn’t have much time to react to that before Tony was already counting down. “Okay three, two--” 

Before reaching one, likely so that Peter would be caught off-guard and wouldn’t tense up, the suit abruptly jolted and Peter’s leg rebroke with a sickening snap as the bones lurched back into place. Pain shot up from his leg like an electric shock, eliciting a choked scream from around the washcloth. Tony’s hand tightened on his shoulder (the suit tightened against his skin). 

“It’s alright, it’s okay.” he comforted. Peter bit down on the washcloth to keep from screaming, his jaw tight as a vice as a few tears involuntarily slipped down his cheeks. “Breathe, kid.” Tony added. 

Peter’s breaths came hard and quick for a few moments, the pain reached its peak, then slowly waned like the tide. Eventually Peter managed to open his eyes again and remove the washcloth from his mouth. Tony was still kneeling beside him. “You with me?” He asked.

“Y-yeah.” Peter said breathlessly. He sat up and examined his newly-straightened leg. The suit had become rigid and unmoving over his leg, like a cast. They were both silent for a beat. 

“I’m sorry, Peter.” Tony said eventually. Peter didn’t respond. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the hologram, staring instead at the electric blue reflections on the tile floor and the strange shadows thrown against the walls. 

“Are you done?” Peter asked. He wanted to throw the suit back in the case and forget about it, wanted to throw himself into bed and sleep for about the next hundred years. “I think you’ve already fucked my night up enough.” 

Tony sat back on his heels. “Kid--”

Somehow, hearing the affectionate nickname was worse than being called his real name. Peter looked up angrily. “You almost blew the entire mission.” 

“If you would have listened to me, you wouldn’t have been caught off-guard by that maniac.” 

“If _you_ would have listened to _me_ , I would have been able to focus on what I was doing!” 

“Peter, you can’t do this alone.” Tony said, just as he had back in the warehouse. 

“Yes, I _can_.” Peter argued petulantly, though not with the venom he’d had earlier. He was too exhausted for that. 

“You’re in the big leagues now, kid. This is only the beginning.” Peter pulled his legs up to his chest and set his jaw, still refusing to look at the hologram. His nerves were already wearing paper thin, and Tony’s voice was like a grinding wheel. “You need someone to watch your back.” 

Peter snapped his eyes to Tony’s face. “Is that why you left?” 

Tony’s lips parted in shock. Peter had wounded him, he could tell. It was almost satisfying. _Almost._ It should have been satisfying, but instead, Peter just felt empty and sick. 

“Peter, I…” Tony began. Peter expected a lengthy explanation of why that wasn’t fair, why it was wrong of him, why he shouldn’t be so harsh. But instead, Tony’s mouth hung open in shock for a few seconds before he closed it again and looked him in the eye, his face broken. “I’m sorry.” He finally finished softly. 

That surprised Peter, and it was getting more and more difficult to surprise him these days. Tony looked like he had more to say, but Peter stopped him, his tone having softened considerably. “Tony—stop.” he averted his eyes, then eventually closed them.

He knew it wasn’t fair of him to blame Tony for his own death. He knew a lot of things, at least rationally, but that didn’t help him much. He was just so _angry._ So angry that it ached. When Tony spoke, his entire being was so alight with grief and anger and loneliness that it threatened to overwhelm him. He knew he couldn’t blame that on Tony. But it was just so much easier than the alternative. 

With a throbbing leg, and a heart that felt as if it couldn’t break any more, Peter opened his eyes again and looked at the hologram. Looked at _Tony._

“Can we...call a truce? Just for the night?” He whispered. He still didn’t think he needed help, but he could at least admit that it would be a lot easier to do his job with an AI. Even if that AI was Tony. Especially if that AI was Tony. He carefully watched Tony’s face, taking in the well-remembered creases near his eyes that steadily softened into a gentle, understanding look. “I’m just...I’m so tired.” Peter finished by closing his eyes again, allowing himself a few tears. 

“Of course, kid.” Tony murmured. “Truce.”

Tony used the spider legs to help Peter to his feet, walking him back to the bed with his hand hovering protectively near the small of his back. He was glad they’d reached some kind of agreement, however shaky it was. They’d have more spats, they’d hurt each other more, he was sure, they’d eventually have to come to terms with everything that had happened. But for the moment, at least Peter could sleep. That, for the moment, was all Tony cared about. 

“Goodnight, kid.” he whispered, though he had a feeling Peter was already asleep. Tony dissolved his hologram to retreat to the circuitry that had become his new world and, just before switching himself off, realized something. 

Peter had called him _Tony_ . Not _it_ , not _you_ , not _the hologram_ . Just _Tony_. 

That had to count for something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm genuinely pretty proud of this chapter, and I hope you guys like it too!


	5. No One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter, Sam, and Bucky all try to return to normal after their mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long! I'm sorry everybody, I started a new job as a night nurse and it takes up quite a bit of my time. I'm still chugging away though! Enjoy this chapter!

Peter awoke to a quiet rapping against the door between his room and Bucky and Sam’s. He pried his eyes open with a groan and rolled over, at first not quite sure where he was. The tapping paused for a moment, then resumed, a bit louder than it had been and accompanied this time with a voice. 

“Pete? Hey, you alive in there, kid?” 

“Y-yep, yeah I’m—yeah.” He slapped at his bedsheets, trying to find his phone, dismayed when he found it and saw that it was already nearly 1pm. “Shit.” He whispered, scrolling through the dozens of texts from Ned and May. 

The door cracked open and Peter rolled back over just in time to see Sam peeking into his room. “Rise and shine, kid. Daylight’s burning and we’ve got a jet to fly.”

“Comin’—” Peter stretched out in search of a T-shirt but ended up rolling out of bed and landing on the floor in a heap. “I’m comin’.”

Sam chuckled. “How’s the leg?” He asked as Peter hopped back up to a standing position, pulling on a goofy science-themed t-shirt over his suit. Peter stopped, then wiggled his foot at him. 

“Good as new. Told ya.” Sam inspected his leg with a raised eyebrow but eventually appeared satisfied and leaned against the doorframe. 

“One hell of a healing factor.” He said. “Get yourself packed up. Your new big brother planned you a field trip.” Peter grinned excitedly and Sam chuckled, then closed the door between them to give Peter a few moments to pack his things. 

Bucky was sitting hunched at the computer table, arms folded in a cradle in which he rested his head, thoroughly unconscious. Last night he’d told Sam to take the bed, that he’d be fine, that he still had work to do anyway and would get some rest on the couch eventually. But apparently he’d never finished his work, having fallen asleep with an oiled rag in his hand, face resting against the shield. There was an open, but dead, laptop in front of him. 

When Sam had first found him, he had half a mind to pour shaving cream in his hand and tickle his nose. Or draw a mustache on him in sharpie. But instead, he’d given him a few hours to rest, having remembered what Bucky had said about himself last night. 

_ I guess Steve agreed _ . 

It was a little jarring to hear something both so personal and so... _ wrong _ come out of Bucky’s mouth. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to know that Bucky’s sentiment was untrue. It would take an idiot not to see that. An idiot, Sam realized, like Steve Rogers. 

He set his jaw and shook his head to get the thought out of his head. They had a mission to debrief and, more importantly, a field trip to go on. Sam put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, ready to gently shake him awake, but the moment he touched him, Bucky’s head shot up and he grabbed reflexively at the nearest gun. 

“Jesus, Buck!” Sam said in surprise. Bucky immediately relaxed and came back to himself. “It’s just me.”

“Sam.” Bucky repeated stupidly. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and pushed his hair back. “Shit.”

“Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty. It’s past noon.” Sam stepped back and allowed Bucky to stand. “Looks like you had a productive night?” He smirked while Bucky rolled his metal shoulder with a wince. 

“Yeah, guess you could say that.” The metal of his shoulder creaked and groaned as he stretched the muscles around it. He wasn’t a big fan of sleeping in the prosthetic, but he’d fallen asleep before he really had the choice. At least Sam had gotten a good night’s sleep on the bed. “I went through and translated as many of the files as I could.” He glanced at his notes. “This goes way deeper than we thought it did.” 

“We’re going to debrief the kid in the car on the way back to Paris.” Sam said. He pulled on his jacket and grinned. “I get to be included in the Peter field trip this time.” 

Bucky checked them out of the hotel (Peter was still enraptured by Bucky’s fluent French) and returned to the black car that had taken them from the airport. Sam had opened a laptop on his knee and began reading the report. 

“Like we expected, this is pretty unusual stuff for an organization as large as Hydra. Half of these files are encoded with scripts we’ve never even seen before. It’s like...guerilla coding.”

“Is Hydra usually...more predictable?” Peter asked with a raised eyebrow. Bucky glanced sideways while he changed lanes. 

“Hydra isn’t necessarily predictable.” He said. “But they do have a lot of procedures. There’s more bureaucratic nonsense than you might think.”

“Right.” Sam agreed. “So to have all these deep codes, weird, rogue procedures we’ve never seen before, that’s not very  _ Hydra _ .”

Peter nodded in understanding, though his own buzzing phone distracted him. The system alert on his home screen made him frown.  _ Look kid. No hands.  _ When he tapped it, a keyboard opened for him to type his response, though his phone’s new AI added something before he could. 

_ Always wanted to put your suit AI into your other tech. Wrote the script last night.  _

_ That okay? _

They didn’t quite have the time to unpack all of that, with Sam continuing to explain the files they’d found. Instead, Peter typed in his response.  _ Listen to this _ , then set his phone down on the console between the three of them. 

“But of what we--what  _ Bucky _ \--could decode in the short time we’ve had, we can gather than whatever this organization is, it’s both much stranger and much larger than we thought.” 

“Are we sure it’s Hydra?” Peter asked. 

“We’re sure it’s...a sect of Hydra.” Bucky said. “They use the same logo and a lot of the same procedures. And if you think about it, it does make sense that they’d change a little, post-Thanos. I mean, half of their organization just disappeared and then came back. That’ll change anybody. Or any  _ thing _ .”

Sam nodded. “But it seems like their…motivations might have changed, somewhat. Their leadership certainly has.”

“They seemed kind of...scattered. I mean, they didn’t even have security cameras at their compound.” Peter agreed. 

“They’re sloppy.” Sam agreed. “And sloppy can be good for us, but the reason behind sloppy is usually desperate. And desperate is dangerous.”

“From what I could decode and translate, this new sect has gone  _ deep _ underground. But they’ve planted seeds everywhere. I found files from different compounds in the UK, South Africa, Egypt, Colombia, Turkey, Kazakhstan...the list goes on.” 

“Jeez.” Peter sighed. 

“They’re spreading themselves thin, but they’re spreading themselves  _ far _ .” Sam said. “And that’s desperate if I’ve ever seen it.” 

“So what do we do?” Neither Bucky nor Sam spoke for a beat. Peter’s gut twisted. “Maybe...maybe I could take a look at the files? I mean, if that’s allowed?” 

Sam snorted. “Peter, you’re the one that stole them, of course you can.”

“I’ve got a friend who’s  _ really  _ good at coding. Maybe he can teach me, and I can try to see if I can get anything out of them?” Peter suggested. It’d be easier to just let Ned do it himself, but he was pretty certain that  _ definitely _ wasn’t allowed. 

Bucky looked at him in the rear view, eyes narrowed, eyebrow raised. “You want to learn an entirely new language just for this mission?” 

“Well, sure.” Peter said. It had been Tony and Natasha who had the technological prowess. Bucky was alright at it, but the world’s technology had gotten a bit over’s Bucky’s head since 1991. Somebody had to step up. “I’ve…” Peter’s eyes flicked to the phone resting on the console. The silver case on the seat beside him. “I’ve been meaning to learn code anyway.”

The jet ride felt much longer coming back than it felt coming in. Bucky and Sam were occupied with phone calls and research, so Peter pulled his knees up to his chest in his seat and watched the ocean pass outside of his window. The sound of the engines and the wind were so loud that Peter couldn’t hear Sam’s phone conversation, despite the man standing less than ten feet away. After a few hours it began to grind on his already over-sensitive ears, so he put in his headphones to try to listen to a podcast or something. 

Instead, lucky him, he got his favorite voice. 

“So, Peter Parker: international superspy.” Tony's AI said through the headphones.

Peter swallowed. “Guess so.” He murmured quietly. Neither Sam nor Bucky seemed to notice him speaking. Tony didn’t speak for a moment, and Peter noticed his phone running some kind of program he didn’t recognize. 

“How’s the leg?” Tony asked unexpectedly. 

“Fine.” 

Tony paused for a beat again, but this time Peter spoke so that Tony couldn’t. “Did you record the mission debrief? What do you make of that?” Their alliance was still shaky at best; Peter felt it better to treat him like a business partner or a tool, a piece of technology, nothing more. Tony seemed, intuitively, to understand this, and didn’t push it. 

“Doesn’t feel right.” Tony answered. “But Hydra was always Rogers’ area, not mine. Speaking of which, why isn’t he on this mission too?” 

Peter glanced up at Sam and Bucky, who still weren’t looking at him. “Uh...he’s...he’s gone, Tony."

“ _ What? _ ” Tony’s voice sounded about as shocked and downright broken as an artificial voice could. So convincing, Peter almost forgot it  _ was _ artificial. “No...he...I didn’t realize he’d…”

“Not in the battle with Thanos, like you.” Peter said quickly. Then, turning into the speaker on the side of his headphones so that he could lower his voice, even though he was pretty sure Sam and Bucky couldn’t hear anyway. “After, he...he was supposed to return the stones to their timelines but he just stayed. In 1945, I mean. He’s still alive, I think he lives in Brooklyn somewhere, but he’s like, a hundred or something.”

The AI was silent for so long Peter re-checked to make sure the headphones were plugged in and still working. Eventually, Peter grabbed gently onto the speaker of his headphones and pulled them toward him. “Tony?” 

“Sorry, I--I’m still here.” He stopped again, after that, and Peter got the distinct impression that it was time to stop talking about Steve. That didn’t really surprise him, knowing what he knew about their relationship. He obliged him, allowing him to drop it, though Tony briefly struggled to get his footing in the conversation. “W-well anyway, without being able to crack those files, I can’t be sure of anything.”

“Well, I’ve got...somebody on that.” Peter told him. He could almost  _ hear _ Tony raising his eyebrows.

“Oh you do, do you?” he asked. Peter didn’t care for his tone. “Wow. You really are a superspy.” 

“He’s great at coding, so I’m asking him to teach me.” Peter said defensively. 

“Y’know kid, I could probably take a look at it for you. Run it through the ol’ neural networks?” 

Peter wondered briefly if Tony could see the way his eyes darkened at the question. He doubted it, but a part of him wished he could see it. “No.” He replied curtly. “It’s fine. Like I said, I’ve been meaning to learn code anyway.” 

They were both silent for a long time after that. Peter watched the bright blue water passing beneath them, transfixed by the way the golden sunlight reflected off of the distant waves, though interrupted by sparse white clouds that drifted below. The conversation felt like work. It felt like a game of poker, neither party wanting to lay all of their cards on the table. And that ached a little, how different this was than when Tony was alive. Contradictingly, Peter had wanted both for Tony to just stay dead, to remember him only as a mural on the wall surrounded by flowers, and for the return of their old routine, their quick back-and-forth, the way Tony would tease him lightly and he’d return with a quip of his own. The way Tony would try to tell him that he was proud and stumble, but the way Peter could see it in his eyes anyway. 

Anything was better than this stilted in-between. 

As if he could read his mind (Peter wondered off-handedly if Tony had written a script for that, too), Tony finally spoke. “So...are we going to...talk about last night? Or…” 

Peter sighed. “What is there to talk about?” He stopped, then took a deep breath. “Look, Tony, I meant what I said last night. I want a truce. Us fighting all the time isn’t going to work.”

“You’re right.” Tony agreed. “I know I’m probably a little jarring, but the fact of the matter is, you need the help.” 

Peter clenched and unclenched his jaw. “I know. I do. But--for the record, I still stand by the rest of what I said, too. You’re--” He struggled for words. “You aren’t Tony. Not  _ my _ Tony anyway. I need you to be a tool, not my friend. I already have friends and I don’t need any more.”

He heard Tony take a deep breath through his headphones. “Alright, yeah. Sure.” He said nonchalantly. Too smart to push his luck. He’d  _ just _ gotten Peter to at the very least work with him. Any pushing now and he’d be right back where he started. “Business only. You got it.” 

Without another word, Peter’s music resumed and the program running on his phone switched off, leaving a black screen. “Tony?” He asked lowly, unsure if he was still listening. A different voice responded. 

“Pete? Who you talking to, kid?” 

It was Sam, having hung up on his phone call and noticed Peter murmuring into his headphones. Peter looked up and quickly shoved the phone in his pocket, its screen now black and empty. “Nothing.” he said a little too eagerly. “I mean... no one.” 

***

The shield was a red, white, and blue blur as it hurtled through the air faster than a bullet. It stopped just shy of Bucky’s face, as he’d put out his arm and caught it straight out of the air with his metal arm; the  _ clang _ it produced echoed through the hills of upstate New York. Bucky returned fire with the shield, following it in a dead sprint toward Sam. 

Sam caught the shield on his forearm--though he stumbled back slightly under the force of the weapon sliding into its holster--and braced himself as Bucky ran forward. Even in sweatpants and a t-shirt and with his unruly hair tied back into a messy ponytail, there was something about watching Bucky run full-pelt towards him that  _ still _ made Sam a little nervous.  They collided as Bucky’s fist propelled toward him and Sam dodged away. Bucky kept at it, one right after another, moving faster than any human should be able to move. Many of the hits came down on the shield, many more slammed into Sam’s side until Sam gritted his teeth and swept his leg out to trip him. 

Bucky fell back but rolled back up and fighting again within a second, utterly relentless. Sam was at least ready that time, bashing Bucky in the shoulder with the shield to bring him down again. But Bucky had other ideas. Before he went back down again he used his metal arm to grab onto the side of the shield and use nothing but gravity to take Sam down with him  A hard kick in the gut sent Sam sprawling over Bucky, landing in a heap in the grass behind him. He pulled out one of his pistols at the same time that Bucky pulled out his knife, and finally, the two ended up literally poised at each other’s throats: Bucky’s knife pressed toward Sam’s throat and Sam’s pistol at Bucky’s jaw, both breathing hard. 

After a moment, Bucky grinned and rolled off of him. “Nice job.” he said. 

Sam laughed once. “You’re like a damn machine, man.” he brushed off his uniform, dismayed at the grass stains that now decorated his knees. 

When he looked back up at Bucky, he’d extended a hand to help Sam up. “A machine that would have had a bullet in his head. You got me.”

“Pfft. I got lucky. Look at you, you didn’t even break a sweat! Not cool.” He checked his watch. “Oh shit, I almost forgot. We’re due at the school in an hour.”

Bucky groaned, his shoulders hunching. “Aw, hell.” Sam just laughed. “Oh you just love this don’t you?” Bucky accused. 

“You’re too scary in your normal suit!” Sam said. “Kids find the original blue and red to be a little more…approachable.” Bucky groaned. Sam had him wearing the goofy howlin’ commandos uniform, complete with cranberry-colored boots and gloves and a bright blue mask around his eyes for when they went to visit a local school for Sam’s community outreach.

He made a fuss about it, but really he didn’t mind it as much anymore. His complaining made Sam laugh, which was most of why he did it these days. They’d been back from France for less than a week and hadn’t really stopped training since. Their sessions were fun, but it was never without an underlying tension. Something stirring on the horizon. They were never just training to train; both had a keen awareness that there was a fight coming, likely sooner than later. 

But for the afternoon they had to put the unease aside and visit an elementary school in Brooklyn and teach them about discrimination. And Bucky had to wear the stupid suit. 

He stood beside Sam on the auditorium stage and stuck to the script, at points even enjoying being up there with Sam, watching him spark fires in the eyes of the kids they spoke to.

“So remember, kids. It’s up to all of us to stop bullying and discrimination. If you see something, say something. You plant yourself like a tree and remember what we always say.” Sam paused to glance at Bucky, then together rile the children all gathered in the school auditorium into saying in unison, “No,  _ you _ move!”

The teachers and students applauded while he and Bucky waved, said their goodbyes, and were ushered backstage by the principal, who dismissed the students while Bucky pulled his mask off. 

“Well as humiliating as this is—” he began with a grin, “We were pretty great out there.” 

Sam laughed easily, coming towards him after shaking the principal’s hand. That was one thing Bucky was glad he didn’t have to deal with. Sam was much better at politics than he was. “You’re getting much better at stage presence! We should enroll you in local theater.” 

“And you’ve never even seen me tap dance yet.” Bucky deadpanned.

While Bucky stripped off the stupid red gloves, Sam looked back over the crowd of kids, now filing a little rowdily out of the auditorium. Several were wearing Captain America t-shirts, and a few even had his own face on it rather than Steve’s. That was certainly strange to see, but it made Sam smile all the same. “Now that’s something I’d pay to see.” He said a little distantly. He’d just caught sight of somebody in the crowd. A man, standing in the back of the room, looking straight at him. 

Sam stopped in the middle of removing his gloves and cowl. He knew that face, even distantly, he could never forget that face. The man was smiling slightly as he nodded for Sam to follow him, then slipped out of the back door of the gym. 

“Sam? You okay?” He realized Bucky was saying. Sam nodded vacantly. 

“Yeah...just fine...look, I gotta—I’ll be right back.”

Sam jogged out of the auditorium, heart rate inexplicably spiking as he weaved through teachers and staff all wanting to chat with him. Finally, he made it out the door and found the man standing beneath a tree with his back to him. Sam stopped and watched the man for a still moment, during which neither spoke. 

The man turned around and Sam suddenly felt lightheaded. “You know, you’re better at that than I ever was.” Steve said with a misty smile. Sam wasn’t moved. 

“What are you doing here?” 

Steve stepped toward him, his movements trembled as he went. His eyebrow was raised slightly, lips still in a smile that deepened the laugh lines around them. “I volunteer on Wednesdays reading to the younger kids.”

Sam huffed. “Well isn’t that one hell of a coincidence.” Steve kept his smile, seeming to mistake Sam’s coldness for his usual quick-witted sarcasm. 

“I like the Howlin’ Commandos costume on Buck.” Steve said with a laugh. “You were always the one with the good id—”

“What do you want, Steve?” Sam interrupted. 

Steve closed his mouth, scrutinizing Sam for a moment with a raised eyebrow. “I wanted to check in, see how you both were doing. Speaking of which, where’s Bucky?” He looked over Sam’s shoulder as if trying to find him. Sam moved to block his gaze. 

“He’s inside. We’re doing just fine.” he said icily. 

Steve finally seemed to understand that this wasn’t just Sam’s usual teasing. His face fell. “Sam, are you alright? You don’t seem yourself.”

Sam's gaze darkened, and at once, he snapped. “Y'know, we’ve just been a little busy, between dealing with the politics of suddenly leading the most powerful army in the world and playing big brother to Spider-Man. You know, Peter Parker? The 16 year old kid that just lost his fourth father figure and  _ really _ could use a little stability right now except oh, he doesn’t get any, because Bucky and I are spread so thin trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Hydra that we have to rely on  _ him _ to decode their correspondence?”

“Sam—”

“Oh!” Sam said a little too loudly, drawing attention from nearby students and teachers. “And let’s not forget also grieving one of my best friends, who died trying to save the world while I was still dusted! Not to mention missing five entire years of time and having to adjust to a life where half the people I knew are now five years older! But other than that we’re great!” Sam crossed his arms and glared daggers at the now unfamiliar man in front of him, who stared back in shock. 

“Sam, I—”

“Don’t  _ Sam _ me, Steve. You don’t get to come here and ask how we’re doing. You forfeited that right when you abandoned us here.”

To Sam’s surprise, Steve laughed. While it was humorless and sarcastic, the sound made Sam’s blood boil. “I didn’t abandon you. I’m right here, aren’t I? I’m—”

Sam stepped forward. One of his hands was curled into a fist at his side. “Tell that to Bucky. He’s heartbroken, going around thinking you left because he just wasn’t good enough for you. That he was just a nuisance to you.” He shocked himself at how easy the venomous words fell from his mouth. Now or never, he figured. 

Steve stepped back a little, wounded and equally as shocked as Sam at what he’d said. “That isn’t true.” he said quietly. “Where is he? I want to tell him--”

“He’s busy.” Sam said again. 

“Look, Sam...I didn’t realize this would be so hard for you. I can come by the compound and try to take some of the weight off your shoulders, I can--”

“You know what? No.” Sam released the fist he was holding tightly and realized that his anger had mostly gone. “I don’t need your help. I’m Captain America now. And you know what? I’m  _ really _ fucking good at it.” He was sure he probably looked insane, standing on the outskirts of a schoolyard and shouting at an old man. “We don’t need your help.” 

With that, Sam turned on his heel and stormed back toward the building. Steve called after him, which made him stop, but he did not look back. 

“Sam, wait!” Steve called, his voice tight. “At least tell Bucky I was here.”

Sam stood there frozen for only a moment before opening the door to the auditorium and slipping inside, leaving Steve standing alone in the schoolyard. 

Bucky was right where he’d left him, but with his gloves and mask back on, as there were a few kids who apparently wanted to see him up close and personal. He was knelt down, smiling for once, and letting two of the younger ones poke his metal arm. Sam stopped in his tracks and watched for a few seconds, eventually finding a smile on his own face. Bucky was good at this, he realized all at once. No matter how much he complained and moaned about it, Bucky was _really_ good at this. He almost looked like a different person, almost like those old portraits of him that hung in museums; back before the war, before Hydra, before Thanos, before _everything_. His brown eyes were alight with joy as he lifted the boys, who were hanging onto his metal arm and giggling. 

It didn’t take long for Bucky to notice Sam standing there, and he quickly stood to gently usher the children away. Then, turning to Sam: “Sam, everything alright?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Sam opened his mouth but didn’t speak at first. Bucky watched him expectantly and Sam couldn’t help but think back to their night in the hotel in France, watching the stricken look that crossed Bucky’s face even when he tried to hide it. Sam closed his mouth again. “Yeah.” he finally said. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” 

“Where were you? Who were you talking to?” 

Sam shook his head and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder to spin him around, away from the open auditorium and, by extension, from Steve. “It’s nothing.” he said a little too quickly. “I mean...no one.” 


	6. Decode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Ned work to decipher the Hydra files and uncover a terrifying secret. Sam and Bucky prepare to face their biggest threat yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: I don't know anything about computer coding so sorry that it's literally all fake and made up lol

Ned could tell something was different when Peter plunked his lunch tray down beside his and sat down. He could see it in Peter’s face. Not something bad; in fact, Peter looked better than he had in weeks. But he also looked tired. Like he’d been running a marathon and had only just taken a break, right then when he sat down beside him. True to form, Ned smiled at him and nudged his shoulder. 

“Look, I got the last of the curly ones.” he said, placing his carton of curly-fries between the two of them. “You can have half, if you want.” He knew Peter well enough by now to know it was best to wait for him to start if there was something wrong; otherwise, you might scare him off. 

“Thanks.” Peter took only one and chewed on it like it took all of his brain power. Ned waited patiently. “Hey…” he finally began. Ned tried not to grin. 

“Yeah?”

“Remember how I wanted you to teach me code?” 

Ned did remember. Months ago--well, he supposed, five years and a few months ago--Peter had asked him to teach him code for fun, and Ned had readily agreed, so long as Peter let him use his webshooters. “Sure.” He said evenly. They’d never really gotten to it, between Peter being busy with Spider-Man things and, of course, the destruction of the entire universe. 

“Well, I was thinking...maybe this weekend you could come over, we could watch some movies and you could teach me?” Peter offered. Ned perked up, if it were possible for him to get any perkier. 

It had been weeks, it felt like, since Peter had come to him and directly asked for his help, even though it was clear he needed it. “Yeah, dude! Of course! I just got the extended cut of Lord of the Rings, I’ll bring it!” 

Peter smiled, and for the first time in weeks, it met his eyes. He looked like he’d just come home. “Yeah. That sounds...really nice, Ned.”

They took the train back to Peter’s apartment and chatted the whole way there. Ned kept him laughing with a friendly debate about which Lord of the Rings character was the best (Sam, obviously), glad to see him looking a little lighter than he’d been. 

As predicted, May had been overjoyed to see Ned, having not seen him since before their fight with Thanos, or about five years. In fact, she didn’t stop hugging him for about ten entire minutes, and May’s hugs were infamously tight. By the time Peter began to seriously worry for his friend’s ability to breathe, May finally let go, with promises of Thai takeout for the both of them. 

A few hours later found them crammed into Peter’s modest bedroom, Peter stuck to the ceiling and typing away at a computer and Ned sitting on his loft bed, mouth full of Pad Thai and eyes filled with tears. 

“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow--” Ned was reciting along with Samwise on screen. “Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer--”

“Dude, how many times have you seen this?” Peter asked with a bright laugh. 

“They meant something, even if you were too small--oh, twelve times--But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand--”

Peter laughed again and webbed a piece of popcorn from the bowl in Ned’s lap. He was working through a bunch of html drills Ned had made for him, much like an elementary schooler working through a coloring book. He was a fast learner, which kept him going through the tedium. Every few minutes he would switch back to the files from the French compound and try a new program to decode them, to little avail. 

The credits for The Two Towers began to roll, and Ned glanced up at him. “How’s it going? Get through those drills?” He sat up to look over Peter’s shoulder as Peter quickly clicked away from the Hydra files. 

“Yep. Getting pretty good.” Peter reported. “Started a few little programs but nothing has worked too well so far.”

“Well, it takes a while. Wanna start Return of the King?” 

“You know it.” 

Ned had been waiting through two entire Lord of the Rings movies for Peter to bring up whatever it was that had so clearly been bothering him. He was a patient guy; it had taken all three original Star Wars movies plus a half of a prequel to get Peter to open up about Ben. He could wait. 

He glanced at Peter out of the corner of his eye; he’d was typing furiously with a frown on his face. 

An alert had just populated the home screen or Peter’s computer. 

_This may take a while, kid. You sure you don’t want me to take a look at it?_

Peter sighed. That would certainly be easier. But he stubbornly closed the alert and glanced over to Ned, just in time to see him turn back to the screen.

“H-hey, Ned?” 

“What’s up?”

“You remember how...how you were my guy in the chair for everything with Vulture?”

Ned raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t exactly where he was expecting Peter to go with this. “Uh, yeah?” 

“Well...Captain Wilson and Sergeant Barnes and I just got back from that mission, right? And—well… I think I might need your help.” This wasn’t exactly what Ned was expecting for what Peter might need help with, but he was down for anything, especially if it involved the triumphant return of the guy in the chair. 

Peter webbed down from the ceiling to sit beside him and explained everything. Well, almost everything. Peter had barely come to terms with talking to the AI, let alone talking about it. As usual, Ned listened patiently, though had to interrupt Peter every so often to express how cool this all was. Peter scrolled through the documents they’d lifted from the Hydra base, dismay blooming on his face. 

“See, it’s all just...nonsense. Sergeant Barnes and I have been trying to decode it but he said it’s like guerilla coding.” 

Ned took the laptop from him and frowned. “He’s right. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He tapped idly at the space bar and scanned the short passage of code that Peter had displayed on the screen. Then, he cracked a grin and his knuckles, and began to type. “It’s nothing your guy in the chair can’t solve, right?” 

Peter grinned and climbed up onto the ceiling again, webbing the remote into his hand to play the movie while Ned began to type. “You’re the man, Ned!” He praised. 

Ned nodded, already in the zone. “Just keep the Doritos flowin', Parker.” He said with a laugh. “And I didn’t forget our deal! I’m using those webslingers one of these days!” Peter laughed too, feeling lighter than he had in weeks. 

“You got it. I’ll ask Captain Wilson if you can use the shield too.” 

“Hey, yeah, does this mean I’m an avenger now?” Ned looked up from the computer and Peter shrugged at him. 

“I mean, I’m not really in charge of the roster, but if were up to me, you would have been one from the beginning, dude.” He said as sincerely as he could with a mouthful of Doritos. His phone buzzed in his pocket. 

_It’s a yes from me._ Tony said. Peter actually smiled at that. 

They sat on Peter’s bed and alternated between working on the code and watching movies. Peter was beside him but stuck to the ceiling, reaching down to grab snacks every so often. Ned typed away, almost as if in a trance, not even reacting when Peter took his empty cans of soda right out of his hands and replaced them with full ones. It was impressive to watch him work, really. They made it about ¾ of the way through Return of the King before Ned sighed and looked up. 

“Alright. I think I may understand what’s going on here.” He reported. Peter flipped down to sit beside him and look at the screen. Ned had opened several windows of pure code, many of which displayed messages like Process Failed. or Error. “Essentially their files are encrypted and coded twice. Once in usual html language, and once, I think, in French. That’s why I couldn’t get past their encryption: I was trying to do it in the wrong language.” 

“I’ve never seen that before.” Peter pointed at the screen, where the html was riddled with French. “These guys may be smarter than I thought.” 

Ned grinned. “Not as smart as us. You got a French dictionary?”

Peter flipped through the French dictionary and wrote what he’d found on a whiteboard while Ned read him phrases in a very bad French accent. Ned managed to translate the section of code back to standard html in a little under an hour. 

“Jeez, and that was just like one paragraph.” Ned said with a sigh once they were done with the section. 

“Next time we’ll take it to Sergeant Barnes. He’s fluent in French, it’ll probably go a lot faster.”

Ned laughed. “Now you tell me.” He took a handful of Skittles and renewed his efforts typing. “But once I de-encrypt this section here, we should be back to the original text of the document.”

Peter watched Ned type, in awe of his skills, wondering just what it was he’d done to deserve him. “You’re a genius, Ned!” It was another few moments before Ned suddenly sat back and hovered his finger over the enter key. 

“Alright, you ready to see what Hydra’s been hiding? Well...about a paragraph of it, anyway.” Ned waggled his fingers dramatically while Peter sidled up beside him. 

“Do it.”

Ned clicked the button and they both watched as the screen turned black for a moment, as if the computer was thinking about it, then lit back up with the plain text record from the Hydra compound. Peter immediately sighed and Ned put his head in his hands. 

“Oh come on!” He tapped his knuckles disapprovingly at the Russian Cyrillic that now populated his screen. “That’s gonna take a little longer to translate than French.”

Peter pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the computer screen. “It’s okay. Bucky is fluent in Russian, too. I’ll send it to him and see what he says in the morning.” Ned rubbed his face and finally closed the laptop, suddenly realizing how tired he was. It was around three in the morning, after all. 

“Well tell him I said hi.” he grumbled absently as he lay back against Peter’s pillows, closing his eyes. Peter chuckled and typed his message. 

Any idea what this says? He attached the picture, sent it, and laid back beside Ned. 

“Dude…” Ned began. Peter expected him to ask about the mission, about Sam and Bucky, about what he thought Hydra might be planning. Instead, Ned continued “who do you think would win in a fight, Scarlet Witch or Loki?” 

Peter laughed in surprise at the question, his face breaking into a smile bigger than he’d worn in a long time. Ned could do that to you. Back when Ben had died, Ned and May were the only two who kept him going: May with her gentle understanding, and Ned with his impressive talent for making him laugh. He wondered again what exactly he’d done to deserve someone like Ned. For reasons he wasn’t quite sure of, tears stung at his eyes while he answered. “Oh, Scarlet Witch, for sure.” 

“Are you joking?” Ned laughed back. “Loki can manipulate reality itself! Scarlet Witch is cool but can she shapeshift?”

He wasn’t stupid. He could see this mistiness in Peter’s eyes, the way he’d stop laughing just to look at him every so often, like he wasn’t sure if this happiness could be real. Peter had been just like that after Ben died, too. As if he thought himself undeserving of that easy, bright laughter. And Ned had been there for him during that, too. Some things never change. 

“Loki only does things for attention or spite. Even if he could beat Scarlet Witch, which he can’t, he wouldn’t.” Peter argued. “Scarlet Witch is more than cool, man, she’s like, a force of nature!” At the end of the sentence, he was surprised to see his phone ringing. “Oh...it’s Sergeant Barnes.”

“Already? Jeez, what is it, 3am?” Ned rolled over to look at Peter, who shrugged, trying to conceal nervousness. He tapped accept call and brought the phone to his ear. 

“Hello?”

Bucky’s voice was already an intense near-shout. “Peter, where did you find that Cylliric?!” He demanded quickly. There were voices behind him. And an alarm. 

Peter sat up and Ned followed him. “Wh—it was from the Hydra texts, we were decrypting them, and—”

“Shit!” Sam said from behind him. Bucky huffed explosively and Peter’s heart dropped. “Kid, we need you at the compound as soon as you can, we’ll send a car, how long can you stay—”

“Wh-why, what’s going on? What did the text say?!” 

There was a brief pause on the other end that felt like a lifetime. Ned and Peter met eyes while Bucky took a deep breath on the other end. 

“They’re going to attack New York.”

***

Though it had been a little past 3am, Bucky had already been awake when Peter had texted him. He didn’t sleep much those days. 

The new compound was quiet and dark and empty when Bucky rolled out of bed to wander the halls. He’d occupied himself for a few hours with typing at the compound’s computer desk, trying to understand the encrypted texts from the Hydra compound, but had given up in frustration around two. He elected to wander instead, eventually finding himself standing in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling window in the compound’s lobby, looking out past his own reflection to the hills of upstate New York.

He could see the ruins of the old compound from there, the statue of the fallen avengers that had been placed in memoriam, lit from below by lights that never seemed to be turned off. Tony’s marble hand was outstretched, palm out, his classic repulsor blast pose. 

Bucky deflated as he stared at Iron Man’s figure. He’d never had the chance to make things right with Tony. Not that he’d ever known Tony to be a particularly forgiving man, but even someone who knew him as little as Bucky did could see the changes in him that had taken place since their battle with Thanos had begun. He’d stopped in the middle of battle when they all arrived. He’d laid down his arms to stare for a moment at Peter, then capture him in a tight hug. That wasn’t the Tony he knew, and he wished sorely that he could have met him.   
Beside Iron Man, Natasha stood steady and heroic with her head held high, billy clubs in her hands ready to strike. He’d learned a little about Natasha from Sam and Steve’s stories about her. He was willing to bet he probably would have loved her, too. But to him, Steve stood the tallest of them all, at the ready with his shield in hand. He nearly smiled. Steve would have hated that damn statue.

It’s not like he’s dead, Bucky reminded himself. He’s probably seen the statue. It didn’t feel like it though. To Bucky, Steve was just as gone as Tony was. 

The large, metal-faced clock in the lobby ticked steadily towards 3am. Bucky sighed and turned away from the window, deciding that coffee was a better use of his time. The freshly-brewed coffee dripped down into the carafe and Bucky leaned against the counter, arms crossed, staring at his bare feet on the kitchen tile. 

His mind wandered again to Steve, as it nearly always did in quiet moments like this. What had he done once he got back home? Had he seen all their old friends? The area in time that he had left was after Bucky had already been taken by Hydra. Had he told their friends what had happened to him? Did they know? 

Bucky would have liked to go back with Steve. It was his home, too. He would have gone to see his mother, with her tired brown eyes and soft smiles. He would have gone to that fire escape where he and Steve used to sneak cigarettes from his father and look out over the harbor, where they’d talk all night and watch the sun come up and tried to pretend he was still that bright-eyed boy from Illinois he used to be. 

Bucky closed his eyes and took a sip of the coffee in his hands. It was no surprise that’s the version Steve preferred. The one that had died on the icy banks beneath the train in Germany.

“Bucky?”

He flinched so hard he dropped the cup of coffee and it shattered at his feet. 

“Whoa, Buck, I’m sorry.” Sam said quickly, stopped dead, hands held up as if in surrender. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s alright.” Bucky responded as he stooped to pick up the shards of his mug. “What are you doing up?” 

Sam joined him on the floor to help him clean. “I could ask you the same thing.” He said, standing back up with a hand full of ceramic, dripping with coffee. 

“Couldn’t sleep.” Bucky said. 

“Yeah, me neither.” Sam poured another cup of coffee and handed it to Bucky. 

“That happen a lot?” Bucky asked him as he took the cup of coffee from his hands, their fingers brushing. 

Sam chuckled, almost in surprise. “Yeah, a little more than I’d like it to.”

Bucky wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he just nodded and took a sip of his coffee. They were both quiet while Bucky set his own coffee down and retrieved another mug, poured a cup for Sam, and set it down in front of him. Sam didn’t speak, just took a long sip, then sighed. 

“It’s weird in here, isn’t it?” He asked. 

“How do you mean?” Bucky frowned at Sam from over his mug. 

“Just…quiet. Feels like we’re in a castle up on the hill, all far away from everything. I know why they moved the tower out of the middle of manhattan, but I just feel...out of it, all the way out here.”

Bucky nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He glanced again at the memorial on the horizon. They were both silent for what felt like a long time, working through their coffee. 

Would Sam have preferred that old version of him too? Sam had never known him when he was that boy from Brooklyn, and he stuck around him anyway. But Bucky was pretty sure that said more about Sam than it did him. He glanced at Sam, who was looking out the window and seemed to be lost in thought. It was rare to catch Sam like that; it seemed like he was always smiling, always ready for the next thing. There must’ve been something really bothering him. 

“Something on your mind?” Bucky asked before he knew what he was doing. Sam tore his eyes away from the window and raised an eyebrow at him, already sliding back into that effortlessly relaxed persona of his. 

“It’s almost three a.m., man. Safe to say we both have plenty to think about.” He said. 

“Fair enough.” Bucky nodded, but didn’t quite let it go. Sam caught the questioning look on his face and gave him a grin. 

“Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.” He offered with a chuckle. Bucky leaned against the counter and considered it, but his phone chimed loudly in his pocket before he could speak. 

Sam laughed. “Still haven’t figured out how to turn that damn thing off, have you?” Truthfully he was glad that Bucky had been distracted from his question. It was a bluff, really. Telling Bucky about everything he had on his mind was just about the last thing he wanted to do, and the last thing Bucky needed. Sam had worked his ass off to cultivate that easygoing image of his, and he didn’t need a long discussion of his feelings to ruin that. He watched as Bucky read the message, bringing the phone up to his face and squinting at it. 

“Forget your readers, grandpa?” Sam asked with a laugh. His smile faded as Bucky frowned at the text, then gasped, nearly dropping the phone. “Bucky? You alright, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost—” Bucky was already dialing the phone and holding it up to his face. “What did he send you?” Sam tried again. 

“I think he decrypted the--” Bucky abruptly stopped and addressed the phone instead. “Peter! Where did you find that Cyrillic?” He demanded into the phone. 

Sam put two and two together. Peter had said he was going to be working on the files from Hydra. He must’ve found something. And judging by the veins popping out of Bucky’s forehead, it must not be anything good. Sam could hear Peter’s tinny voice through the speaker of Bucky’s phone, stuttering that he’d found the Cyrillic in the Hydra texts. Sam and Bucky both swore. 

Bucky was immediately arranging a car for the kid to drive up to the compound first thing tomorrow morning while Sam turned on his heel to notify the other surviving avengers, despite still being unsure just what he was calling about. When he turned, Bucky was looking right at him, though still holding the phone to his ear. “They’re going to attack New York.”

Sam swore. He expected as much, but hearing it out loud still turned his blood to ice as he opened the emergency channels to reach the surviving avengers. 

“This is Captain Wilson, putting out a distress call on all channels. Sergeant Barnes, Spider-Man and I have discovered correspondence from Hydra indicating that there is an imminent attack on New York City. Please respond.” 

He repeated the message several times before closing the line, sighing deeply and rubbing a hand across his mouth. Bucky was typing wildly at a computer, apparently renewing his efforts to decode the correspondence. 

“That was faster than I expected.” Sam commented while he paced. “Peter really learn to code that fast?” 

“He had help.” Said Bucky in a low voice. “A friend of his. He’s coming with him tomorrow.” 

“He recruited a school friend to de-encrypt Hydra correspondence?” Sam asked incredulously. Bucky simply shrugged. “What time are they coming tomorrow? I’m sure Rhodes can get here by mid-morning, god knows about Wanda and Bruce, though--” He sat down at a computer and began to frantically type at the keyboard while Bucky slowly stopped and turned toward him, still occupied with what he’d said about recruiting a friend. “Did the file say anything else that you could translate? Anything about a date, a time, a place--”

“Sam.” Bucky called plainly. Sam looked up at him, surprised at his tone. It sounded defeated. “We’re in over our heads.” 

Sam blinked at him. “What?”

Bucky stood from the desk and ran a hand through his hair. “We’re in over our heads, Sam. We’re talking about a full-scale invasion of New York by Hydra forces we can barely even understand. We can’t take this on by ourselves.”

“I know.” Sam said. More defensively than he meant. “That’s why I just called the rest of the team—”

“The team—” Bucky sighed hotly. “We’re firing on half cylinders at best! We’ve never taken on a threat this big. We need—” Bucky stopped and averted his eyes. “We need to ask for help from someone who’s been here. I know nobody’s heard from him in a while but I think Steve could have some real insight here—“

Sam was already shaking his head. “No, no, absolutely—“

“Sam, open your eyes! Neither of us have ever lead a defensive of this size! And the team? What team?! Peter is 16 and Wanda’s still practically a child too, Captain Marvel is off god knows where and like it or not, two war vets and an ex hydra spy are not equipped to take on—“

“And an old man would give us that edge we need, huh?” Sam asked sarcastically, anger clearly brewing in his dark eyes. His voice was raised a pitch in his stress and anger. Bucky sighed sharply. 

“He has experience, Sam! How many times has Steve taken on Hydra?”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “How many times have I?” He challenged, immediately on the offensive. 

Bucky backed off, lowering his voice and holding his hands out as if in apology, but he did not concede. “Steve surely has a few pointers! He lead the avengers for years—“

“The Avengers wasn’t ‘Steve and the backup singers’, Bucky!” Sam shouted, pointing harshly at Bucky’s chest. “They were a team! And so are we, so I suggest you start acting like it.” Stunned into silence, Bucky’s mouth snapped shut. Sam turned, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at his neck. He could feel Bucky’s hurt expression burning a hole in his back, but couldn’t bring himself to turn back around. 

“Besides.” Sam said, voice significantly quieter. “Like you said. Nobody’s seen him in months.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY SORRY IT'S BEEN LIKE A YEAR OOPS!! For real though, I hope everyone's staying safe out there. I got some hardcore writer's block with this one, but since I've been quarantined I figured I'd try to pick it back up. If my garbage brings you some comfort during this scary and uncertain time, let me know in the comments! I always love suggestions on other stories as well so if you've got something you want to read I'd love to hear it and maybe take a crack at it. Thanks for all the support, I'm glad we can all lift each other up and get lost in a different world for a little while. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Stay safe, guys :)


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